An Enhanced Power Control Scheme for Dual Connectivity

In 3GPP LTE-Advanced Release-12, the feature of dual connectivity (DC) has been introduced to enhance small cell networks from the aspects of higher layer architecture and physical layer procedures, which can improve mobility robustness and per-user throughput as well as avoid frequent hard handover among small cells. To guarantee the UE maximum transmit power is not exceeded, the conventional power scaling and simple semi-static power splitting between two network points were considered for DC. However, both schemes would degrade the DC performance in terms of uplink coverage and user throughput due to the uncoordinated scheduling at two network points. To address this issue, an enhanced power control scheme is proposed which could conduct uncoordinated adjustment of uplink power and data rate for DC. The simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance advantages of the proposed scheme.