Power allocation in the context of dimensioning the air‐interface of third generation W‐CDMA‐based cellular systems

The adoption of W-CDMA as an essential component of the air-interface of third-generation cellular systems brings to the foreground the need for new planning methodologies and software tools. In this perspective, this paper addresses planning problems that are important to the dimensioning of W-CDMA-based cellular networks. The problems aim at finding the optimal feasible allocation of transmission power to the sets of uplink and downlink connections that should be supported by the system, so as to cope with a corresponding traffic load scenario. The problems are concisely defined, mathematically formulated and solved by means of two computationally efficient, novel algorithms. The solutions of the problems may be seen as operating points at which the system performance should be driven. Finally, numerical results are presented and concluding remarks are drawn. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.