Performance Analysis of Network-Assisted Two-Hop D2D Communications

Network-assisted single-hop device-to-device (D2D) communication can increase the spectral and energy efficiency of cellular networks by taking advantage of the proximity, reuse, and hop gains when radio resources are properly managed between the cellular and D2D layers. In this paper we argue that D2D technology can be used to further increase the spectral and energy efficiency if the key D2D radio resource management algorithms are suitably extended to support network assisted multi-hop D2D communications. Specifically, we propose a novel, distributed utility maximizing D2D power control (PC) scheme that is able to balance spectral and energy efficiency while taking into account mode selection and resource allocation constraints that are important in the integrated cellular-D2D environment. Our analysis and numerical results indicate that multi-hop D2D communications combined with the proposed PC scheme can be useful not only for harvesting the potential gains previously identified in the literature, but also for extending the coverage of cellular networks.Comment: 6 pages and 7 figure

Game-theoretic Resource Allocation Methods for Device-to-Device (D2D) Communication

Device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular networks allows mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to use the licensed spectrum allocated to cellular services for direct peer-to-peer transmission. D2D communication can use either one-hop transmission (i.e., in D2D direct communication) or multi-hop cluster-based transmission (i.e., in D2D local area networks). The D2D devices can compete or cooperate with each other to reuse the radio resources in D2D networks. Therefore, resource allocation and access for D2D communication can be treated as games. The theories behind these games provide a variety of mathematical tools to effectively model and analyze the individual or group behaviors of D2D users. In addition, game models can provide distributed solutions to the resource allocation problems for D2D communication. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the applications of game-theoretic models to study the radio resource allocation issues in D2D communication. The article also outlines several key open research directions.Comment: Accepted. IEEE Wireless Comms Mag. 201