Uplink Closed Loop Power Control for LTE System
Performance evaluation with the open loop error, TPC command delay and power headroom reporting
Bilal Muhammad1, Abbas Mohammed
COMSATS Institute of IT, Abbottabad Campus, Pakistan1
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
Abstract— The role of uplink power control is to suppress
interference. Power control refers to set output power
levels of transmitters, base stations in the downlink and
User Equipment (UE) in the uplink. In this paper the
performance of 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) closed
loop power control combined with fractional path loss
compensation factor is evaluated by simulating the effects
of open loop error, Transmit Power Control (TPC)
command delay and power headroom reporting.
Simulation results show that the closed loop power control
with fractional path loss compensation factor is
advantageous compared to closed loop power control with
full path loss compensation. The closed loop power control
with fractional path loss compensation factor is found to
improve the system performance in terms of mean bit rate
by 63%.
Keywords- LTE, power control, power headroom report, TPC
I. INTRODUCTION
Uplink transmitter power control is a key radio resource
management feature in cellular communication systems. It is
usually used to provide an adequate transmit power to the
desired signals to achieve the necessary quality, minimizing
interference to other users in the system and maximizing the
battery life of the mobile terminal. In order to achieve these
goals, uplink power control has to adapt to the radio
propagation channel conditions, including path loss,
shadowing and fast fading fluctuations, while limiting the
interference effects from other users, within the cell and from
neighboring cells.
The closed loop power control combined with fractional path
loss compensation factor sets the SINR target based on the
path loss of the users while the conventional closed loop uses
a single SINR target for all the users in a cell. The
performance evaluation of the LTE closed loop power control
combined with fractional path loss compensation factor for the
Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) [1] is evaluated
and an optimal value of 0.8 for the path loss compensation
factor is proposed in [2]. This paper extends the work carried
out in [2] by evaluating the performance with the open loop
error, TPC command delay and power headroom reporting.
The paper is outlined as follows. In Section II power control is
discussed in general it also presents E-URTA power control
1
formula for the PUSCH. In Section III the modeling of
realistic scenario which includes open loop error, TPC
command delay and power headroom reporting is presented.
In Section IV the simulation assumptions are outlined. The
simulations results are described in Section V followed by
conclusions in Section VI.
II. POWER CONTROL
LTE uses single carrier frequency division multiple access
(SC-FDMA) as its radio access technology in the uplink.
Usage of an orthogonal transmission scheme eliminates intra-
cell interference; however, the system performance is still
limited by the inter-cell interference.
In order to maximize the spectral efficiency, 3GPP LTE is
designed for frequency reuse 1 [1] both for downlink and
uplink, which means that all cells in the network use the same
frequency bands. Thus with frequency reuse 1 [1], both data
and control channels are sensitive to inter-cell interference.
The cell edge performance and the capacity of a cell site can
be limited by the inter-cell interference. Therefore the role of
closed loop power control becomes decisive to provide the
required SINR to maintain an acceptable level of
communication between the eNB and the UE while at the
same time controlling interference caused to neighboring cells.
Battery power is a scarce resource for portable devices such as
notebooks, ultra-portables, gaming devices and video cameras.
In the coming years these devices will operate over mobile
broadband technology such as LTE. Therefore to minimize
consumption of battery power and use the available power
efficiently, power control can be helpful.
The 3GPP specifications [1] defines the setting of the UE
transmit power for PUSCH by the following equation
PPUSCH = min{P max,10 ⋅ log 10 M + P0 + α ⋅ PL + δ mcs + f (∆i)} (1)
where
- Pmax is the maximum allowed transmit power.
- M is the number of physical resource blocks (PRB).
- P0 is cell/UE specific parameter. It is used to control
SNR target and is signaled by the radio resource control
(RRC). In this paper, it is assumed that P0 is cell-specific.
- α is the path loss compensation factor. It is a 3-bit cell
specific parameter in the range [0-1] signaled by RRC.
- PL is the downlink path loss estimate. It is calculated in
the UE based on the reference symbol received power
(RSRP).
- δmcs is cell/UE specific modulation and coding scheme
defined in the 3GPP specifications for LTE.
- f (∆ i) is UE specific. ∆i is a closed loop correction
value and f is a function that permits to use accumulate or
absolute correction value.
In this paper, accumulate [1] correction value is considered to
correct the UE uplink power.
The accumulate correction value is calculated as
f (i) = f (i − 1) + δ PUSCH (i − K PUSCH ) [ dB]
where δPUSCH is UE specific correction value, which is also
referred as TPC command. TPC commands [-1, 0, 1, 3] dB
are used during the simulations. f (0) = 0 and
KPUSCH = 4 TTIs.
The parameter P0 is calculated [3] as
P 0 = α ⋅ (SNR 0 + Pn ) + (1 − α )( P max − 10 ⋅ log 10M 0 ) [dBm]
where,

SNR0 is the open loop target SNR (signal-to-noise ratio)

Pn is the noise power per PRB.

M0 defines the number of PRBs for which the SNR target is
reached with full power. It is set to 1 for simplicity.
The LTE closed loop power control mechanism operates
around open loop point of operation. The UE adjusts its uplink
transmission power based on the TPC commands it receives
from the eNB when the uplink power setting is performed at
the UE using open loop power control.
Therefore, eq. (1) can be re-written as
PPUSCH = min{P max, P OL + f ( ∆ i )} [dBm]
Where POL is the uplink transmit power set by the open loop
point of operation and is given by
POL = min{P max,10 ⋅ log 10 M + P0 + α ⋅ PL} [ dBm]
It is worthwhile to note that, if PPUSCH is set using the closed
loop power control then power limitation is neglected in
eq. (5) and is applied by eq.(4).
III. MODELLING OF REALISTIC SCENARIOS
A. Power headroom reporting Model
Power headroom (Ph) is a mechanism by which the mobile
terminal is configured to provide regular reports on its power
to the network. The power headroom report can be used by the
eNB to calculate the path loss of the users which is then used
in setting of SINR target.
Power headroom report is sent by the UE to the eNB which
indicates how much power the UE is left with to start using
full power. In other words, it is the difference between the UE
transmit power and the maximum UE transmit power and is
given by:
P h = P max − PPUSCH [ dBm ] (6)
The following triggers [4] should apply to the power
headroom reporting:
(2)

The path loss has changed by a threshold value, since the
last power headroom report is sent. The threshold value
can be [1, 3, 6, inf] dB.

The time elapsed from previous power headroom report is
more than [10, 20, 50, 200, 1000, inf] TTIs.
The equation for setting of SINR targets based on the path loss
presented in [2] is given by
(3)
(α − 1) ⋅ ( PL − PL max) + SINRtarget , PL < PL max
SINRtarget′ =  [dB] (7)
SINRtarget , PL ≥ PL max
As the power headroom reporting is taken in to account, now,
in order to set the SINR target based on the path loss, the PL is
calculated [2] as:
1 (8)
PL = [dB]
α ⋅ {Ph − 10 ⋅ log 10 M − P 0 − f (∆i )}
where Ph = PPUSCH = Pmax when PL = PLmax.
B. Open loop Error Model
(4) The open loop power control errors are usually the result of
several factors such as the accuracy of measurements of
reference symbol received power (RSRP) at the UE and
inaccuracies in the radio parts such as temperature sensitivity
and tolerances in the standard. The open loop error is
(5)
identified as a slowly varying component and varies between
manufactures of UEs. The sources of open loop power control
error are illustrated in Fig. 1.
2

Fig 1: Illustration of the sources of the open loop error
Since the LTE RF components are the same as that used in
WCDMA, the tolerance described in the technical
specification [5] can be used for first approximation.
Tolerance of + 9 dB is required, however a batch of UEs can
handle + 4 dB. Thus, the absolute value of + 4dB with a
uniform distribution is considered as an open loop error in
order to evaluate the effect of the closed loop power correction
using TPC commands.
By taking the absolute open loop error into account, the
expression for calculating UE uplink power using closed loop
is given by:
PPUSCH = min{P max, POL + abserr + f ( ∆i)} [dBm ]
where abserr is the absolute open loop error.
C. TPC command delay Model
The eNodeB issues the TPC command to adjust the power at
the UE. However, the adjustment takes place after some delay.
This delay is typically the propagation round trip time (RTT)
and the processing time at the UE and the eNB. The RTT
delay is due to the wave propagation, while the processing
delay at the eNodeB occurs due to measuring the received
SINR and issue of TPC command based on SINR target and
received SINR. The processing delay at the UE occurs due to
measuring the RSRP, calculating the PL, calculating the
transmit power and applying the adjustment based on the
received TPC command. The total time delay used during
simulations is KPUSCH = 4 TTIs [1].
IV. SIMULATION ASSUMPTIONS AND MODEL
Dynamic simulations have been used. The terminals having
the velocity of 3 km/h are randomly positioned in the system
area, and the radio channel between each base station and
terminal antenna pair is calculated according to the
propagation and fading models. The simulator used the ray-
based 3GPP Spatial Channel Model Extension (SCME) [5] to
model the multipath fading propagation in the system. The
simulation parameters are listed in Table 1.
Traffic Models
User distribution Uniform
Terminal speed 3 km/h, 120 km/h
Data generation Simple upload traffic model
Radio Network Models
Distance L = 35.3+37.6*log(d), d = distance in meters
attenuation
Shadow fading Log-normal, 8dB standard deviation
Multipath fading SCM, Suburban macro
Cell layout Hexagonal grid, 3-sector sites, 21 sectors in total
Cell radius 167m (500m inter-site distance)
System Models
Spectrum 10MHz (50 resource blocks) 180kHz (1 resource
allocation block)
Max UE output 250mW into antenna
power
Max antenna gain 15dBi
Modulation and QPSK and 16QAM, turbo coding
coding schemes
Scheduling Round robin
algorithm
Receiver MMSE [6] with 2-branch receive diversity
Table 1: Default simulation parameter
The LTE closed loop power control operates around open loop
point of operation, thus the simulator sets the open loop power
control based on the SINR target the power is corrected using
(9) TPC commands which are issue based on the difference
between SINR target and estimated received SINR. Based on
transmit power, channel realizations, modulation scheme, and
the active interferers, an SINR is calculated for each link and
antenna including both intra- and inter-cell interference.
In contrast to full buffer traffic model a simple upload traffic
model is used. In full buffer model, neither a user leaves due
to hang up, nor does a new user arrives, since each user buffer
is filled with infinite data, and the user will not leave until and
unless it transmits all the data.
The simple upload traffic model is designed in a way such that
the users can have limited data in their buffers, thus a user
leaves when it transmits the data and new users are added in
the system. It provides the ease to define the user upload file
size and mean bearer bit rate. The mean bearer bit rate along
with the offered cell throughput defines the total number of
users in the system. Moreover, the simple upload buffer model
also allows inclusion the effect of queuing delay when
calculating the user bit rate. The queuing delay reflects more
realistic results and provides a better scale for performance
comparison in choosing the optimal value of α. For different
values of α, the 5th percentile and mean user throughput is
calculated by taking the effect of queuing delay into account.
3
 V. SIMULATION RESULTS by 3 dB. In order to analyze the behavior using the path loss
In this section we present the simulation results using the change as the power headroom trigger, the mobiles speed is
simple upload traffic model. Each value of α is investigated for increased from 3 km/h to 120 km/hr and the path loss
each closed loop SINR target from a set of SINR targets. The threshold is set to 1 dB, while the simulation time is kept the
criterion that selects optimal value of α for a given SINR same.
target is optimized for cell-edge bit rate i.e. that value of α has
Performance a naylsis of Phr re port trigge ring at change in PL
been chosen which gives the best CELL edge performance for 100

a given SINR target. 90

A. Performance analysis with the power headroom report 80

70
In this section, the behavior of the closed loop power control
60
with the power headroom reports is analyzed. The results

C.D.F. [%]
involve the individual effect of both the triggers applicable to 50

the power headroom reporting namely periodicity and path loss 40

change. The performance comparison of both the triggers is 30

also analyzed. 20 α : 1, Ide al

α : 0.8, Ideal
10 α : 0.8, perodicity 200 ms
a) Triggering at the periodic periodic intervals α : 0.8, plth: 1 dB
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Use r bit rate [Mbps]
The performance comparison in terms of user bit rate of the
Fig 3: CDF plot of the user bit rate showing the performance of the power
closed loop power control with full compensation and α = 0.8 headroom report. The mobile speed is 120 km/h. The simulation time is
with or without the power headroom report is shown in Fig. 2. 200 ms.
It can be seen from the figure with the power headroom
reports the user bit rate is degraded for the users with good The power headroom report triggering at change in the path
radio conditions. The reason for this degradation in the mean loss results in better performance than triggering at periodic
bit rate is due to the fact that the SINR target setting is based intervals, it can be seen in Fig. 3, the mean bit rate is more
on the outdated path loss. The SINR target setting based on degraded using the periodicity trigger than using the path loss
the path loss aims to improve performance, in terms of bit rate, threshold trigger. The reason for more degradation using
for the users with good radio conditions. Thus, the more periodicity trigger is that the power headroom report triggers
outdated the path loss the more will be the degradation in the at periodic intervals, if any change in the UE uplink power
mean bit rate, as can be seen in Fig. 2 for high periodicity occurs right after periodic interval the UE have to wait for
values. It is worthwhile to note that, for a longer simulation next interval to report the new uplink power. Thus the longer
time and setting the power headroom periodicity to infinity, the periodic interval the longer the UE has to wait to send
the performance of the SINR target setting based on the path power headroom update.
loss will be more like that of the absolute setting of the SINR
target. On the other hand, triggering power headroom report when
path loss changes by a threshold value the uplink power is
100
Performance analysis with Phr report triggering at periodic intervals reported immediately meaning that eNB has more updated
90
estimate of the UE path loss leading to better performance in
terms of mean bit rate. In this specific scenario, power
80
headroom is reported only once using periodic intervals but on
70
the other hand the power headroom was sent whenever the UE
60
experienced path loss change of 1 dB.
C.D.F. [%]

50

40
c) Performance comparison of both the triggers
α : 1, Ideal
30
α : 0.8, Ideal
20
α : 0.8, periodicity: 50 ms Fig. 4 shows the performance of the power headroom report
α : 0.8, periodicity: 100 ms
10
α : 0.8, periodicity: 200 ms
triggering either at the periodic intervals or when UE
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 experiences 1 dB change in path loss and also the combination
User Bit rate [Mbps]
of both the triggers. It can be seen that the power headroom
Fig 2: CDF plot of the user bit rate. The power headroom report
report triggering at change in path loss alone results in the
triggering after 50, 100 and 200 TTIs. same performance when compared to power headroom report
triggering at periodic intervals or using both of the triggers.
b) Triggering at change in the path loss However, the reporting overhead will be more in case of
triggering at change in path loss than that of periodic
The simulation time is too short and mobiles speed of 3 km/h triggering. Thus it’s a tradeoff between reporting overhead and
is too slow for the UE's to experience a change in the path loss mean bit rate.

4
 100
Peformance compa rasion of pow er headroom triggers control with TPC command delay shows the same performance
in terms of cell-edge and mean bit rate as that of the closed
90
loop without TPC command delay.
80

70
Performance analysis with the TPC delay
60 100
C.D.F. [%]

50 90

40 80

30 70
α: 1
20 α : 0.8 60

C.D.F. [%]
α : 0.8,periodicty: 50 TTIs
10 50
α : 0.8,periodicty: 50 TTIs , plth: 1dB
α : 0.8, plth: 1dB
0 40
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Use r bit rate [Mbps] 30

Fig 4: Performance comparison of the power headroom triggers. 20

10 α : 0.8
α : 0.8, TPC delay
B. Performance analysis with the open loop error and TPC 0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
command delay User Bit rate [Mbps]

In here, the individual and combined effects of both the open Fig 6: CDF plot of the user bit rate showing both the closed loop power
loop error and TPC command delay are investigated. Fig. 5 control with or without TPC delay.
shows that the performance of the user bit rate is improved for
the users with good radio conditions when taking the open loop Finally, Fig. 7 shows the combined effect of both the open loop
error in to account. This is because of the increase of the uplink error and the TPC command delay. However, since there is no
power owing to the open loop error for the number of UE noticeable effect of the TPC command delay as discussed
which results in high received SINR. The performance in terms above, it can be concluded that the effect on the user bit rate
of user bit rate is slightly degraded for users in the low CDF shown is due to the open loop error only. It is also evident from
region since the number of UE cannot satisfy the required the fact that the results in this figure show similar trend to those
SINR due to open loop error. However, the performance in Fig. 5.
change in terms of bit rate due to absolute error is just the Performance analysis with the abserr and TPC delay
initial phenomenon at the start of simulations (i.e., short 100

simulation time), and will not be visible when simulated for 90

longer time since the closed loop power control compensates, 80

for the open loop error, using the TPC commands. 70

60
C.D.F. [%]

Performance analysis with absolute error in power setting

100 50

90 40

80 30

70 20

60 10 α : 0.8, Ideal
C.D.F. [%]

α : 0.8, abserr and TPC delay

50 0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
40 User bit rate [Mbps]

30
20
10
0
0 0.1 0.2
Fig 5: Performance analysis of the user bit rate when only the absolute
error is taken into account.
The TPC delay introduces an initial delay of only 4 TTIs
before the UE starts to use the TPC command it received from
the eNB to correct its uplink power. It is worth noting that with
the round robin scheduling, it takes only 14 TTIs before all
users start to correct their uplink power using the TPC
command. Thus, the effect of TPC command delay is not
visible as can be seen in Fig. 6, where the closed loop power
Fig 7: Performance analysis of the user bit rate with both the absolute
error and TPC delay are taken into account.
α : 0.8, Ideal
α : 0.8, abserr
0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 C. Performance analysis with power headroom report, open
User Bit rate [Mbps]
loop error and TPC command delay
It is worthwhile to note that the terminal speed is increased to
120 km/h just to analyze the behavior of the power headroom
report triggering at change in path loss. In order to simulate
the combined effect of the realistic scenario the mobile speed
is kept at 3 km/h while the path loss threshold of 3 dB is used.
Fig. 8 shows the performance in terms of user bit rate when
taking into account the combined effects of the absolute error,
time delay, and power headroom report triggering at periodic

5
intervals of 200 ms and/or change in path loss by 3 dB. It can [6] J. H. Winters, “Optimum Combining in Digital Mobile Radio with Co-
channel Interference”, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in
be seen from this figure that the closed loop power control Communications, Vol. SAC-2, No. 4, July 1984.
using α = 0.8 shows performance gain in both mean and cell-
edge bit rate. The mean bit rate is improved by 63% and at the
same time providing better cell-edge performance compared to
α = 1.
Performance analysis of Closed loop Power control Schemes
100

90

80

70

60
C.D.F. [%]

50

40

30

20
α : 1, Ideal
10 α : 0.8, Ideal
α : 0.8, Realisttic
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
User bit rate [Mbps]

Fig 8: Performance analysis in terms of the user bit rate taking in to

account the power headroom report, absolute error, and time delay.

VI. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper the performance of closed loop power control
combined with fractional path loss compensation factor is
evaluated by simulating the effects of open loop error, TPC
command delay, and power headroom reporting.
The results shown that the performance of the closed loop
power control using α = 0.8 with the power headroom report
triggering at periodic intervals and change in path loss of the
UE. It was found that with the use of power headroom report
the performance was degraded in the mean bit rate due to the
outdated path loss used in the setting of SINR target. However,
this performance in terms of the mean bit rate is still greater
than the performance of the closed loop power control with the
full compensation.
The TPC command delay and open loop error did not affect the
performance of closed loop power control using α = 0.8.
In the realistic case, the performance in terms of mean bit rate
was improved by 63 % for a given SINR target. This shows the
performance of the closed loop power control combined with
the fractional path loss compensation factor is advantageous
than the closed loop power control with full compensation.
REFERENCES
[1] 3GPP “E-UTRA Physical layer procedures”, TS 36.213 V8.1.0
[2] Bilal Muhammad, Abbas Mohammed. ” Performance Evaluation of
Uplink Closed Loop Power Control for LTE System” in proceedings of
IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference 2009 Fall (VTC’09-Fall), 20-23
September 2009.
[3] R1-074850 “Uplink Power Control for E-UTRA – Range and
Representation of P0”.
[4] R4-081162 “LS on power headroom reporting”.
[5] D. Baum et.al. ”An Interim Channel Model for 4G Systems, Extending
the 3GPP Spatial Channel Model (SCM)” in proceedings of IEEE
Vehicular Technology Conference 2005 Spring (VTC’05-Spring), May
2005