Game theoretic distributed uplink power control for CDMA networks with real-time services

In this paper, the issue of efficient power allocation in the uplink of CDMA wireless networks supporting real-time services with various QoS constraints, is addressed. Within the proposed framework, utility functions are adopted to reflect a user’s degree of satisfaction with respect to its actual throughput requirements satisfaction and respective power consumption. The corresponding problem is formulated as a non-cooperative game where users aim selfishly at maximizing their utility-based performance under the imposed limitations. The existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium point of the proposed Uplink Power Control (UPC) game is proven, at which all users have attained a targeted SINR threshold value or transmit with their maximum power, leading essentially to an SINR-balanced system. Moreover, a distributed iterative algorithm for reaching UPC game’s equilibrium is provided. The properties of equilibrium in a pure optimization theoretical framework are studied, and the tradeoffs between users’ overall throughput performance and real-time services’ QoS requirements satisfaction, in channel aware resource allocation processes, are revealed and quantified. Through modeling and simulation the efficacy of the introduced framework and proposed UPC algorithm are demonstrated and evaluated.