In LTE and LTE-Advanced uplink, the interference power in a cell depends on the user scheduling and power assignment in neighboring cells. As a result, it is hard to accurately estimate the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) values and make the right MCS (Modulation and Coding Scheme) selection. To address this challenge, we propose open-loop and closed-loop power control schemes to reduce both the average and the variance of the interference power in order to improve the system performance. It is shown that compared to the existing fractional power control (FPC) in LTE, the proposed schemes improve the cell-average throughput by 7-8% while maintaining the same cell-edge throughput in networks with low penetration loss, and improve the cell-average throughput by 4-6% and the cell-edge throughput by 15-23% in networks with high penetration loss.
