Power control is the intelligent selection of transmitter power output in a communication system to achieve high performance within the system.

The power control in CDMA 2000 and WCDMA is mainly used to reduce (minimize) the interference due to presence of other mobile users, fading, log normal shadowing as well as from fast Rayleigh fading.

In CDMA2000, power control is at the rate of 800Hz in both the links and in WCDMA it is at a rate of 1500Hz in both links.