Joint Pilot and Data Power Control Optimization in the Uplink of User-Centric Cell-Free Systems

• Joint pilot and data power control (JPDPC) is known to have a large impact on both the overall spectral/energy efficiency and fairness of cell-based systems. However, the impact of JPDPC on the inherent spectral/energy efficiency and fairness trade-off in cell-free (CF) systems is much less understood. In this letter, considering pilot contamination, user-centric clustering and multi-antenna access points, we formulate novel JPDPC problems in CF systems as distinct optimization tasks, whose objectives are maximizing the minimum spectral efficiency (SE), maximizing the total SE and maximizing the product of the individual signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios. Since these problems are non-convex, we solve them by combining successive convex approximation and geometric programming. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first letter analyzing and optimizing JPDPC in user-centric CF systems. Our results indicate that JPDPC allows users to save more energy than the disjoint optimization of pilot and data powers when maximizing the minimum SE, while showing that JPDPC plays a crucial role in balancing between SE and fairness also in CF systems.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Telekommunikation (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Telecommunications (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Interference

Signal to noise ratio

Uplink

Power control

Optimization

Contamination

Throughput

Cell-free

pilot and data power control

SCA

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)