Emerging wireless communication networks are required to provide data services which tolerate large variations of link quality. Such applications allow flexible power control procedures. In this paper, we approach the distributed power control problem from an automatic control point of view. A new framework for opportunistic power control is proposed, where the target quality of service at each link is determined by a linear quadratic regulator controller according to a given self-adaptive criterion. Stability and convergence of proposed framework are analytically guaranteed, while its performance is confronted with other algorithms through computer simulations. © 2009 IEEE. 414418Zander, J., Performance of optimum transmitter power control in cellular radio systems (1992) IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol, 41 (1), pp. 57-62. , FebGunnarsson, F., Fundamental limitations of power control and radio resource management in wireless networks (2004) Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput, 4, pp. 579-591. , SepZander, J., Distributed cochannel interference control in cellular radio systems (1992) IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol, 41 (3), pp. 305-311. , AugFoschini, G.J., Miljanic, Z., A simple distributed autonomous power control algorithm and its convergence (1993) IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol, 42 (4), pp. 641-646. , NovChiang, M., Hande, P., Lan, T., Tan, C.W., (2008) Foundations and Trends in Networking, pp. 381-533. , chapter Power Control in Wireless Cellular Networks, pp, Now Publishers IncF. de S. Chaves, F. R. P. Cavalcanti, R. A. de Oliveira Neto, and R. B. Santos, Opportunistic distributed power control with adaptive QoS and fairness for wireless networks, Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput., published online, DOI: 10.1002/wcm.753, 2009Xiao, M., Shroff, N.B., Chong, E.K.P., A utility-based power-control scheme in wireless cellular systems (2003) IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw, 11 (2), pp. 210-221. , AprF. de S. Chaves, V. A. de Sousa Jr., R. A. de Oliveira Neto, C. H. M. de Lima, and F. R. P. Cavalcanti, Performance of energy efficient game theoretical-based power control algorithm in WCDMA, Proc. 17th IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Coommunica-tions, pp. 1-5, Sep. 2006F. de S. Chaves, F. R. P. Cavalcanti, R. B. Santos, and R. A. de Oliveira Neto, Opportunistic distributed power control with QoS guarantee in wireless communication systems, Proc. 8th IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, pp. 1-5, Jun. 2007Favoreel, W., De Moor, B., Gevers, M., Van Over-schee, P., Closed-loop model-free subspace-based LQG-design (1999) Proc. 7th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, pp. 1926-1939. , JunJakes, W.C., (1974) Microwave Mobile Communications, , Wiley, 2nd editionJafar, S.A., Goldsmith, A., Adaptive multirate CDMA for uplink throughput maximization (2003) IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun, 2 (2), pp. 218-228. , Mar