Efficient resource allocation for network‐assisted multi‐link device‐to‐device communication

Abstract

Summary The network‐assisted device‐to‐device (D2D) communication as an underlay to cellular spectrum has attracted much attention for local area connectivity as a means to improve the cellular spectrum utilization. D2D communication as an underlay to cellular network open up various challenges including appropriate mode selection, spectral utilization, power control and efficient resource allocation. In this article, we study these issues to guarantee the quality‐of‐service requirements for the users, and a three‐step scheme is proposed. The proposed scheme first performs a mode selection procedure to choose the transmission mode of each user equipments (UEs). Then, a clustering scheme is developed to group the links that can share a common resource to improve the spectral efficiency. For the selection of suitable cellular UEs for each cluster whose resource can be shared, a cluster head selection algorithm is also developed. Finally, the expression for maximum number of links that the radio resource of shared UE can support is analytically derived. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using a WINNER II A1 indoor office model. The results show that by proper management, D2D communication can effectively improve the total throughput than conventional cellular communication. From the results, it is clear that the proposed cluster head selection scheme is able to take advantage of both residual power requirement and the power requirement of UEs. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.