Disaster Management Using D2D Communication With Power Transfer and Clustering Techniques

Abstract

Device-to-device (D2D) communications as an underlay to cellular networks can not only increase the system capacity and energy efficiency but also enable national security and public safety services. A key requirement for these services is to provide alternative access to cellular networks when they are partially or fully damaged due to a natural disaster event. In this paper, we employ energy harvesting (EH) at the relay with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer to prolong the lifetime of energy constrained network. In particular, we consider a user equipment relay that harvests energy from radio frequency signal via base station and use harvested energy for D2D communications. We integrate clustering technique with D2D communications into cellular networks such that communication services can be maintained when the cellular infrastructure becomes partially dysfunctional. Simulation results show that our proposed EH-based D2D clustering model performs efficiently in terms of coverage, energy efficiency, and cluster formation to extend the communication area. Moreover, a novel concept of power transfer in D2D clustering with user equipment relay and cluster head is proposed to provide a new framework to handle critical and emergency situations. The proposed approach is shown to provide significant energy saving for both mobile users and clustering heads to survive in emergency and disaster situations.