An upper bound on the convergence rate of uplink power control in DS-CDMA systems

Uplink transmit power control is crucial for resource allocation and interference management in DS-CDMA systems. In literature, specific distributed algorithms are proposed and their convergence rates are evaluated. In this letter, we explore the optimal achievable convergence rate. We first understand power control as a channel coding problem and derive an upper bound on the convergence rate. Then we propose coding power control bits across users, suggesting the achievability of the bound. Finally, we use this upper bound to evaluate the uplink power control overhead in IS-95 systems.