Contrasting Open-Loop and Closed-Loop Power Control Performance in UTRAN LTE Uplink by UE Trace Analysis

Uplink power control in UTRAN Long Term Evolution consists of an open-loop scheme handled by the User Equipment and closed-loop power corrections determined and signaled by the network. In this study the difference in performance between pure open-loop and combined open and closed-loop power control has been analyzed and the different behavior of fractional vs. full path-loss compensation has been evaluated. A comprehensive system level simulation model has been used with a facility to trace a particular test user during its motion from eNodeB towards the cell border and back to its initial position. This study demonstrates the effect of distance path-loss of a test user on several physical layer performance metrics including throughput, resource allocation as well as modulation and coding scheme utilization. Simulation results in a fully loaded network show high throughput for open-loop fractional power control for the user located in the vicinity of the serving eNodeB, however, steep performance degradation has been observed when the user is moving towards the cell edge. The user throughput at the cell border can be increased by the closed-loop component. The benefit of closed-loop power control is the higher homogeneity in terms of throughput across the entire network area and the ability to automatically stabilize the network performance under different conditions like cell load and traffic distribution.