Device-to-device communication in cellular networks : multi-hop path selection and performance.

Abstract

Over the past decade, the proliferation of internet equipment and an increasing number of people moving into cities have significantly influenced mobile data demand density and intensity. To accommodate the increasing demands, the fifth generation (5G) wireless systems standards emerged in 2014. Device-to-device communications (D2D) is one of the three primary technologies to address the key performance indicators of the 5G network. D2D communications enable devices to communicate data information directly with each other without access to a fixed wireless infrastructure. The potential advantages of D2D communications include throughput enhancement, device energy saving and coverage expansion. The economic attraction to mobile operators is that significant capacity and coverage gains can be achieved without having to invest in network-side hardware upgrades or new cell deployments. However, there are technical challenges related to D2D and conventional cellular communication (CC) in co-existence, especially their mutual interference due to spectrum sharing. A novel interference-aware-routing for multi-hop D2D is introduced for reducing the mutual interference. The first verification scenario of interference-aware-routing is that in a real urban environment. D2D is used for relaying data across the urban terrain, in the presence of CC communications. Different wireless routing algorithms are considered, namely: shortest-path-routing, interference-aware-routing, and broadcast-routing. In general, the interference-aware-routing achieves a better performance of reliability and there is a fundamental trade-off between D2D and CC outage performances, due to their mutual interference relationship. Then an analytical stochastic geometry framework is developed to compare the performance of shortest-path-routing and interference-aware-routing. Based on the results, the spatial operational envelopes for different D2D routing algorithms and CC transmissions based on the user equipment (UEs) physical locations are defined. There is a forbidden area of D2D because of the interference from the base stations (BSs), so the collision probability of the D2D multi-hop path hitting the defined D2D forbidden area is analysed. Depend on the result of the collision probability, a dynamic switching strategy between D2D and CC communications in order to minimise mutual interference is proposed. A blind gradient-based transmission switching strategy is developed to avoid collision within the collision area and only requires knowledge of the distances to the serving base station of the current user and the final destination user. In the final part of my research, the concept of LTE-U (Long term evolution for Unlicensed Spectrum), which suggests that LTE can operate in the unlicensed spectrum with significant modifications to its transmission protocols, is investigated. How the envisaged D2D networks can efficiently scale their capacity by utilising the unlicensed spectrum with appropriately designed LTE-Unlicensed protocols is examined