Relay assisted device-to-device communication with channel uncertainty

The gains of direct communication between user equipment in a network may not be fully realised due to the separation between the user equipment and due to the fading that the channel between these user equipment experiences. In order to fully realise the gains that direct (device-to-device) communication promises, idle user equipment can be exploited to serve as relays to enforce device-to-device communication. The availability of potential relay user equipment creates a problem: a way to select the relay user equipment. Moreover, unlike infrastructure relays, user equipment are carried around by people and these users are self-interested. Thus the problem of relay selection goes beyond choosing which device to assist in relayed communication but catering for user self-interest. Another problem in wireless communication is the unavailability of perfect channel state information. This reality creates uncertainty in the channel and so in designing selection algorithms, channel uncertainty awareness needs to be a consideration. Therefore the work in this thesis considers the design of relay user equipment selection algorithms that are not only device centric but that are relay user equipment centric. Furthermore, the designed algorithms are channel uncertainty aware. Firstly, a stable matching based relay user equipment selection algorithm is put forward for underlay device-to-device communication. A channel uncertainty aware approach is proposed to cater to imperfect channel state information at the devices. The algorithm is combined with a rate based mode selection algorithm. Next, to cater to the queue state at the relay user equipment, a cross-layer selection algorithm is proposed for a twoway decode and forward relay set up. The algorithm proposed employs deterministic uncertainty constraint in the interference channel, solving the selection algorithm in a heuristic fashion. Then a cluster head selection algorithm is proposed for device-to-device group communication constrained by channel uncertainty in the interference channel. The formulated rate maximization problem is solved for deterministic and probabilistic constraint scenarios, and the problem extended to a multiple-input single-out scenario for which robust beamforming was designed. Finally, relay utility and social distance based selection algorithms are proposed for full duplex decode and forward device-to-device communication set up. A worst-case approach is proposed for a full channel uncertainty scenario. The results from computer simulations indicate that the proposed algorithms offer spectral efficiency, fairness and energy efficiency gains. The results also showed clearly the deterioration in the performance of networks when perfect channel state information is assumed

User Association in 5G Networks: A Survey and an Outlook

26 pages; accepted to appear in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Recent Advances in Cellular D2D Communications

Device-to-device (D2D) communications have attracted a great deal of attention from researchers in recent years. It is a promising technique for offloading local traffic from cellular base stations by allowing local devices, in physical proximity, to communicate directly with each other. Furthermore, through relaying, D2D is also a promising approach to enhancing service coverage at cell edges or in black spots. However, there are many challenges to realizing the full benefits of D2D. For one, minimizing the interference between legacy cellular and D2D users operating in underlay mode is still an active research issue. With the 5th generation (5G) communication systems expected to be the main data carrier for the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm, the potential role of D2D and its scalability to support massive IoT devices and their machine-centric (as opposed to human-centric) communications need to be investigated. New challenges have also arisen from new enabling technologies for D2D communications, such as non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and blockchain technologies, which call for new solutions to be proposed. This edited book presents a collection of ten chapters, including one review and nine original research works on addressing many of the aforementioned challenges and beyond