Power Control in Multi-Layer Cellular Networks

Abstract: We investigate the possible performance gains of power control in multi-layer cellular systems where microcells and picocells are distributed within macrocells. Although multilayers in cellular networks help increase system capacity and coverage, and can reduce total energy consumption; they cause interference, reducing the performance of the network. Therefore, downlink transmit power levels of multi-layer hierarchical cellular networks need to be controlled in order to fully exploit their benefits. In this work, we present an analytical derivation to determine optimum power levels for two-layer cellular networks and generalize our solution to multi-layer cellular networks. We also simulate our results in a typical multi-layer network setup and observe significant power savings compared to single-layer cellular networks.