Performance of a fast forward power control using power control bits for the reverse power control as power measurement

In this paper, we propose a fast forward power control in which the power control bits in the forward link used for the reverse link power control are utilized to measure the estimate of forward power. In a DS-CDMA system, there are generally power control bits transmitted in the forward link for fast reverse power control and they are transmitted usually with a fixed rate. Even if they have polarity, the SNR of a power control bit is equivalent to that of a pilot bit. This means that they can play an equivalent role to the pilot symbols in the sense of power measurement. In some systems, the position of a power control bit in a power control group is usually randomized to average out the interference. Then the power measurement by power control bits is performed quasi-periodically while the power measurement by pilot symbols or periodic power control bits can be made periodically. Computer simulation shows that the performance degradation by this quasi-periodicity is small to validate the proposed fast forward power control scheme