A downlink power control heuristic algorithm for LTE networks

The recent development of mobile terminals, the proliferation of mobile applications and the increasing need for mobile data have led to a dense deployment of mobile networks. In this context, the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard is adopted by a large number of mobile network operators. LTE uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) technique on the downlink of the radio interface along with frequency reuse-1 model. However, Inter-Cell Interference (ICI) and system power consumption will cause limitations in terms of mean user throughput and system performance. Indeed, several recent works focus on the minimization of ICI and power consumption in multi-user OFDMA networks. In this paper, we propose a distributed heuristic power control algorithm that aims at minimizing the total downlink power of an LTE system. We also study the impact of the power control algorithm on ICI and system performance. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm largely reduces the downlink power consumption without degrading system performance. In addition, it increases the mean throughput for cell-edge users that are mainly affected by ICI problems.