Enhanced Power Control Strategy for Downlink Soft Handover in WCDMA Systems

In this paper, we investigate power control for downlink soft handover in WCDMA systems. Balanced power control, unbalanced power control or site selection diversity transmit power control are often proposed in literature. Each of these strategies has advantages and limitations. In our study, we propose a hybrid scheme that takes the benefits of each strategy in order to enhance system performance. We attempt to maintain macrodiversity gain while achieving a low outage probability. Simulation results show a good compromise between macrodiversity gain and capacity gain. Our approach also remains efficient for loaded as well as less loaded system.