Interference-aware Discovery and Optimal Uplink Scheduling for D2D Communication in LTE Networks

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication underlaying a cellular infrastructure has recently gained tremendous interest not only by the researchers but also by cellular operators and equipment manufacturers. In this paper, we have introduced a novel D2D communication scheme which can be realized by a D2D discovery mechanism along with a two-phase interference-aware optimal D2D uplink scheduling scheme for Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks. Our proposed scheme is different from the D2D emergency communication use-case being proposed by 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in (i) reuse of Resource Blocks (RBs) and (ii) network assisted D2D communication, because of which commercial use of the proposed scheme can be made possible. To validate the proposed scheme, we have conducted extensive simulations usingMatlab and emulations in a test-bed created for this purpose. Both simulation and emulation results demonstrate that by allowing D2D communication along with cellular communication, network performance is improved significantly. However, implementing D2D along with the cellular transmissions requires certain changes in the 3GPP standards and should be reflected in the future releases of LTE.