Stability and Performance of Continuous-Time Power Control in Wireless Networks

This paper develops a comprehensive stability analysis framework for general classes of continuous-time power control algorithms under heterogeneous time-varying delays. Our first set of results establish global asymptotic stability of power control laws involving two-sided scalable interference functions, and include earlier work on standard interference functions as a special case. We then consider contractive interference functions and demonstrate that the associated continuous-time power control laws always have unique fixed points which are exponentially stable, even under bounded heterogeneous time-varying delays. For this class of interference functions, we present explicit bounds on the decay rate that allow us to quantify the impact of delays on the convergence time of the algorithm. When interference functions are linear, we also prove that contractivity is necessary and sufficient for exponential stability of continuous-time power control algorithms with time-varying delays. Finally, numerical simulations illustrate the validity of our theoretical results.