Pricing and power control in a multicell wireless data network

In this paper we consider distributed power control in a multicell wireless data system and study the effect of pricing transmit power. Drawing on our earlier work in [1], we formulate the QoS of a data user via a utility fun ction measured in bits per Joule. We consider distributed power control, mo deled as a noncooperative game, where users maximize their utilities in a m ulticell system. Base station assignment based on received signal strength as well as received signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) are considered joint ly with power control. Our results indicate that for both assignment scheme s, such a procedure results in an inefficient operating point (Nash equilib rium) for the entire system. We introduce pricing of transmit power as a me chanism for influencing data user behavior and our results show that the di stributed power control based on maximizing the net utility (utility minus the price) results in improving the Pareto efficiency of the resulting oper ating point. Variations of pricing based on global and local loading in cel ls are considered as a means of improving the efficiency of wireless data n etworks. Finally, we discuss the improvement in utilities through a central ized scheme where each base station (BS) calculates the best SIR to be targ eted by the terminals it is assigned.