Robust uplink power control for co-channel two-tier femtocell networks

This paper is concerned with uplink interference suppression problem in two-tier femtocell networks through power control. Specifically, we consider the Quality-of-Service (QoS) of the macrocell user and femtocell users in terms of their received Signal to Interference-plus-Noise Ratios (SINRs) at macrocell base station (MBS) and femtocell base stations (FBSs), and we also take femtocell users’ power efficiency into consideration by designing an objective function, which is a weighted sum of transmission power and squared SINR difference between femtocell user's maximum SINR and actual SINR. Due to the error of the SINR at MBS caused by distance errors, a robust uplink power control problem is formulated, and it is equivalent to a robust convex optimization problem with femtocell users’ SINR constraints. Then, the robust convex optimization problem is converted into a general convex optimization problem. Moreover, a distributed power control algorithm combined with admission control is presented to obtain femtocell users’ optimal power allocation. Numerical results show the convergence and effectiveness of the proposed uplink power control algorithm.