Device-to-device communication as an underlay to LTE-advanced networks

TLDR

Device‑to‑device communication under LTE‑Advanced is studied as an enabler of local services that impose limited interference on the primary cellular network. The study investigates D2D communication under LTE‑Advanced as an enabler of local services with limited interference, and proposes mechanisms for session setup and management within the LTE SAE. The authors integrate D2D into LTE‑Advanced, propose LTE SAE procedures for session setup and management, and evaluate the approach with system‑level simulations in an interference‑limited local area. Results show that D2D communication increases total throughput in the cell area.

Abstract

In this article device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying a 3GPP LTE-Advanced cellular network is studied as an enabler of local services with limited interference impact on the primary cellular network. The approach of the study is a tight integration of D2D communication into an LTE-Advanced network. In particular, we propose mechanisms for D2D communication session setup and management involving procedures in the LTE System Architecture Evolution. Moreover, we present numerical results based on system simulations in an interference limited local area scenario. Our results show that D2D communication can increase the total throughput observed in the cell area.