Device to

device communications

Device-to-device (D2D) communication that enables

direct communication between nearby mobiles is an exciting and
innovative feature of next-generation cellular networks. It will facilitate
the interoperability between critical public safety networks and
ubiquitous commercial networks based on e.g. LTE. How should we
analyze and design such hybrid networks consisting of both cellular and
ad hoc links? WNCG Profs. Jeffrey Andrews and Constantine
Caramanis, in collaboration with lead researchers and WNCG students
Xingqin Lin and Qiaoyang Ye are working to develop novel models for
such hybrid cellular systems and to use them for network performance
evaluation and design. This research involved close collaboration with
and significant technical inputs from the Head of NSN North America
Radio Systems, Amitava Ghosh, and Principal Engineer Mazin Al-
Shalash from WNCG Industrial Affiliate Huawei. Their work has
impacted 3GPP standards contributions from NSN and Huawei on
specific D2D technologies in LTE Release 12.

In principle, exploiting direct communication between nearby mobile

devices will improve spectrum utilization, overall throughput, and
energy efficiency, while enabling new peer-to-peer and location-based
applications and services. D2D-enabled LTE devices have the potential
to become competitive for fallback public safety networks that must
function when cellular networks are not available or fail. Introducing
D2D poses many new challenges and risks to the long-standing cellular
architecture, which is centered around the base station (BS). In a recent
magazine paper, Prof. Jeff Andrews, Xingqin Lin, Amitava Ghosh, and
Rapeepat Ratasuk provided an overview of D2D standardization
activities in 3GPP, identified outstanding technical challenges, drew
lessons from initial evaluation studies, and summarized “best practices”
in the design of a D2D-enabled air interface for LTE-based cellular
networks.

Among others, one fundamental issue is how to share spectrum

resources between cellular and D2D communications. Specifically,
should D2D mobiles use orthogonal spectrum resources or
opportunistically access the spectrum resources occupied by cellular
mobiles? Spectrum sharing is further complicated by the new design
flexibility of D2D mode selection that means a potential D2D pair can
switch between direct and conventional cellular communications. In two
recent papers, Prof. Jeff Andrews, Prof. Constantine Caramanis,
Xingqin Lin, Qiaoyang Ye, and Amitava Ghosh, Mazin Al-Shalash used
tools from stochastic geometry to address the D2D spectrum sharing
problem, proposing novel tractable models for hybrid networks, and
developing a unified analytical framework for performance analysis and
design of hybrid networks. They successively applied the proposed
models and the analytical framework to the study of the diverse D2D
spectrum sharing scenarios.

The first paper considers sharing uplink spectrum with D2D mobiles
and derives analytical rate expressions. The WNCG team found that
D2D mobiles enjoy much higher data rates than regular cellular
mobiles due to the short range of communications. Cellular mobiles may
also benefit from D2D as D2D can help offload traffic from congested
cellular networks. From a coverage perspective, we revealed an
interesting tradeoff between D2D spectrum access and mode selection:
as more potential D2D mobiles use direct communication mode, the
network should actually make less spectrum available to them to limit
their interference.
As a parallel work to the first paper, the research team investigated a
D2D-enabled cellular network, where downlink resources are either
partitioned or shared between D2D and downlink cellular
transmissions. They provided tractable and accurate analytical results
that are amenable to efficient optimization. The researchers found that
to maximize the total throughput, D2D links with more traffic to transmit
should be more aggressive in their spectrum access, despite the
interference this generates to the rest of the network. In a heavily loaded
network, the total throughput benefits from offloading local traffic to
D2D mode, as D2D communication only requires “1” hop while
relaying via a BS requires “2” hops. They further investigated the
optimal resource partition between D2D and cellular networks, and
found that the choice of dedicated and shared approaches depends on
the D2D traffic and the resource partition in dedicated networks. The
dedicated approach may achieve larger throughput in a network with
many short-range D2D links and optimal resource partition.