UMTS Power Control Open loop power control is the ability of the UE transmitter to sets its output power

toa specific value. It is used for setting initial uplink and downlink transmission powerswhen a UE is accessing the network. The open loop power control tolerance is 9 dB(normal conditions) or 12 dB (extreme conditions) Inner loop power control (also called fast closed loop power control) in the uplink isthe ability of the UE transmitter to adjust its output power in accordance with one ormore Transmit Power Control (TPC) commands received in the downlink, in order tokeep the received uplink Signal-to-Interference Ratio (SIR) at a given SIR target. TheUE transmitter is capable of changing the output power with a step size of 1, 2 and 3dB, in the slot immediately after the TPC_cmd can be derived. Inner loop power controlfrequency is 1500Hz.The serving cells estimate SIR of the received uplink DPCH, generate TPC commands(TPC_cmd) and transmit the commands once per slot according to the following rule: if SIR est > SIR target then the TPC command to transmit is "0", while if SIR est < SIR target thenthe TPC command to transmit is "1". Upon reception of one or more TPC commands ina slot, the UE derives a single TPC command for each slot, combining multiple TPCcommands if more than one is received in a slot. Two algorithms are supported by theUE for deriving a TPC_cmd. Which of these two algorithms is used, is determined by aUE-specific higher-layer parameter, "PowerControlAlgorithm".Algorithm 1: The power control step is the change in the UE transmitter output power in responseto a single TPC commandAlgorithm 2: If all five estimated TPC command are "down" the transmit power is reduced by 1 dB If all five estimated TPC command are "up" the transmit power is increased by 1 dB Otherwise the transmit power is not changedTransmitter power control rangeThe transmit power of the downlink

channels is determined by the network. The powercontrol step size can take four values: 0.5, 1, 1.5 or 2 dB. It is mandatory for UTRAN tosupport step size of 1 dB, while support of other step sizes is optional. The UE

generates TPC commands to control the network transmit power and send them in theTPC field of the uplink DPCCH. Upon receiving the TPC commands UTRAN adjustsits downlink DPCCH/DPDCH power accordingly. Outer loop power control is used to maintain the quality of communication at the levelof bearer service quality requirement, while using as low power as possible. The uplink outer loop power control is responsible for setting a target SIR in the Node B for eachindividual uplink inner loop power control. This target SIR is updated for each UEaccording to the estimated uplink quality (BLock Error Ration, Bit Error Ratio) for eachRadio Resource Control connection. The downlink outer loop power control is theability of the UE receiver to converge to required link quality (BLER) set by thenetwork (RNC) in downlink. Power control of the downlink common channels are determined by the network. Ingeneral the ratio of the transmit power between different downlink channels is notspecified in 3GPP specifications and may change with time, even dynamically.Additional special situations of power control are Power control in compressed mode and Downlink power during handover .