In a multihop cellular network, mobile terminals are able to transmit directly to other mobile terminals allowing them to lower their maximum transmission power and use other terminals as relays to forward traffic towards the base station. However, a large amount of interference is created near the base station because all traffic either emanates or is destined to the base station making it the capacity bottleneck of the network. In an autonomous infrastructure multihop cellular network, certain mobile terminals that have a connection to the backbone network act as access points and send traffic directly onto the backbone network, as would a base station. This reduces the amount of traffic required to be handled by the base station and increases network capacity. However, access points will require transmission parameters like their pilot power to be adjusted autonomously to optimal levels. In this paper, we propose an autonomous pilot power protocol that can be used by both access points and base stations. Our simulation results show that by adjusting a parameter within the pilot power protocol, a required percentage of covered terminals can be achieved by the network without prior knowledge of the location or density of terminals. Furthermore, the pilot power protocol determines the pilot power level which is optimal in terms of SINR and power consumption that achieves the required coverage while effectively eliminating the capacity bottleneck that existed at the base station.
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