A wireless base station and method are described for adjusting an output power level for self-optimizing radio access node. The base station monitors a link metric of a downlink traffic channel and records the measurements as historical link metric data. Later, the base station compares the link metric with the historical link metric data and adjusts the power level of a broadcast channel and one or more system channels. This may reduce the operating radius of the base station, including the broadcast channels, system channels, and traffic channels, to reduce interference with other cells in a network. This method may be used in a femtocell or picocell wireless base station.