This paper presents uplink power control in cellular radio systems fro
m an economic point of view. A utility function is defined for each mo
bile user, which reflects the user's preference regarding the carrier-
to-interference ratio (CIR) and the transmitter power. We observe that
, on one hand, mobile users prefer to transmit at a lower power for a
fixed CIR. On the other hand, for a given transmitter power, users pre
fer to obtain a better CIR. Based on this observation, we make two fun
damental assumptions about the utility function. We formulate the upli
nk power control problem as a non-cooperative N-person game. Under the
two assumptions that we make about the utility function, there exists
a Nash equilibrium. To show the generality of the framework, we study
one special case by defining the utility as a linear function. This m
odel encompasses many of the widely studied power control problems. A
more general case is also studied by defining utility as an exponentia
l function. This paper establishes a general economic-based framework
for studying resource management in wireless networks and points out n
ew research directions.