A Stochastic Geometric Analysis of Device-to-Device Communications Operating over Generalized Fading Channels

Device-to-device (D2D) communications are now considered as an integral part of future 5G networks which will enable direct communication between user equipment (UE) without unnecessary routing via the network infrastructure. This architecture will result in higher throughputs than conventional cellular networks, but with the increased potential for co-channel interference induced by randomly located cellular and D2D UEs. The physical channels which constitute D2D communications can be expected to be complex in nature, experiencing both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) conditions across closely located D2D pairs. As well as this, given the diverse range of operating environments, they may also be subject to clustering of the scattered multipath contribution, i.e., propagation characteristics which are quite dissimilar to conventional Rayeligh fading environments. To address these challenges, we consider two recently proposed generalized fading models, namely $\kappa-\mu$ and $\eta-\mu$, to characterize the fading behavior in D2D communications. Together, these models encompass many of the most widely encountered and utilized fading models in the literature such as Rayleigh, Rice (Nakagami-$n$), Nakagami-$m$, Hoyt (Nakagami-$q$) and One-Sided Gaussian. Using stochastic geometry we evaluate the rate and bit error probability of D2D networks under generalized fading conditions. Based on the analytical results, we present new insights into the trade-offs between the reliability, rate, and mode selection under realistic operating conditions. Our results suggest that D2D mode achieves higher rates over cellular link at the expense of a higher bit error probability. Through numerical evaluations, we also investigate the performance gains of D2D networks and demonstrate their superiority over traditional cellular networks.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Cache-enabled Heterogeneous Cellular Networks: Comparison and Tradeoffs

Caching popular contents at base stations (BSs) is a promising way to unleash the potential of cellular heterogeneous networks (HetNets), where backhaul has become a bottleneck. In this paper, we compare a cache-enabled HetNet where a tier of multi-antenna macro BSs is overlaid by a tier of helper nodes having caches but no backhaul with a conventional HetNet where the macro BSs tier is overlaid by a tier of pico BSs with limited-capacity backhaul. We resort stochastic geometry theory to derive the area spectral efficiencies (ASEs) of these two kinds of HetNets and obtain the closed-form expressions under a special case. We use numerical results to show that the helper density is only 1/4 of the pico BS density to achieve the same target ASE, and the helper density can be further reduced by increasing cache capacity. With given total cache capacity within an area, there exists an optimal helper node density that maximizes the ASE.Comment: Accepted by IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2016. This version includes detailed proofs of the proposition

Energy Efficiency and Sum Rate when Massive MIMO meets Device-to-Device Communication

This paper considers a scenario of short-range communication, known as device-to-device (D2D) communication, where D2D users reuse the downlink resources of a cellular network to transmit directly to their corresponding receivers. In addition, multiple antennas at the base station (BS) are used in order to simultaneously support multiple cellular users using multiuser or massive MIMO. The network model considers a fixed number of cellular users and that D2D users are distributed according to a homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP). Two metrics are studied, namely, average sum rate (ASR) and energy efficiency (EE). We derive tractable expressions and study the tradeoffs between the ASR and EE as functions of the number of BS antennas and density of D2D users for a given coverage area.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, to be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) Workshop on Device-to-Device Communication for Cellular and Wireless Networks, London, UK, June 201