Dynamical effects of time delays and time delay compensation in power controlled DS-CDMA

Transmission power control is essential in systems of the third-generation (3G) in order to optimize the bandwidth utilization, which is critical when variable data rates are used. One remaining problem is oscillations in the output powers, due to round-trip delays in the power control loops togethe r with the power up-down command device. The oscillations are naturally qua ntified using discrete time-describing functions, which are introduced and applied, More importantly, time-delay compensation (TDC) is proposed to mit igate the oscillations. When employing TDC, the power control algorithm exh ibits greater stability, which is important from a network perspective. Sim ulations illustrate the oscillations and the benefits of TDC, Moreover, the fading tracking capability is improved, and thus, less fading margin is ne eded. The results apply not only to wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA), but to other direct-sequence (DS) CDMA systems power controlled in a similar manner as well.