Relays in HSPA+: Power Control and Mobility

There is substantial and growing motivation to deploy wireless relays in 3G+ and 4G networks both in residential and commercial contexts to achieve significant coverage extension and capacity increases at potentially relatively low cost. However, relays operating in shared spectrum may introduce interference thus potentially counterbalancing gains, and conversely, relays requiring a dedicated resource (for access or backhaul) may raise issues of efficiency and load balancing including under or over use of either relay or macro (base station) resources. In this paper, we consider these issues and propose new power control and mobility algorithms to overcome these challenges. Results of our detailed system simulations are presented demonstrating how substantial gains in user experience, capacity, and coverage extension may be obtained in the context of HSPA+.