Optimal forward link power allocation for data transmission in CDMA systems

The paper considers optimal forward link power allocation for data transmission in DS-CDMA systems. Acceptable quality voice communications in DS-CDMA can be achieved through the application of the forward error correction (FEC). Due to stringent requirements on signal delay, no retransmission is allowed in voice only systems. Highly reliable data transmission over wireless channels, however, can be achieved with hybrid automatic-repeat-request (ARQ) schemes. The average power allocated to data users then needs to be calculated as the actual link transmitted power times the average number of times that a data packet must be transmitted before it is accepted. Since a base station´s total power available to mobiles is limited, there is an optimum power allocated to every data user in the cell, which maximizes the system capacity. The optimal power allocation can be described as the stochastic nonlinear programming optimization problem. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the problem. The powers allocated to data users are location dependent, but the numerical results demonstrate that the mean signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) is location independent when the optimal power allocation is achieved