Discovery Signal Design and Its Application to Peer-to-Peer Communications in OFDMA Cellular Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel discovery signal for P2P communication in OFDMA cellular networks, enhancing neighbor discovery, interference management, and resource sharing with minimal overhead and high efficiency.

Contribution

The paper presents a unique discovery signal design that improves P2P neighbor discovery and interference management in cellular networks, addressing stability and overhead issues.

Findings

Enhanced neighbor discovery efficiency

Improved interference tolerance and power efficiency

Potential for better local service and edge device performance

Abstract

This paper proposes a unique discovery signal as an enabler of peer-to-peer (P2P) communication which overlays a cellular network and shares its resources. Applying P2P communication to cellular network has two key issues: 1. Conventional ad hoc P2P connections may be unstable since stringent resource and interference coordination is usually difficult to achieve for ad hoc P2P communications; 2. The large overhead required by P2P communication may offset its gain. We solve these two issues by using a special discovery signal to aid cellular network-supervised resource sharing and interference management between cellular and P2P connections. The discovery signal, which facilitates efficient neighbor discovery in a cellular system, consists of un-modulated tones transmitted on a sequence of OFDM symbols. This discovery signal not only possesses the properties of high power efficiency, high interference tolerance, and freedom from near-far effects, but also has minimal overhead. A practical discovery-signal-based P2P in an OFDMA cellular system is also proposed. Numerical results are presented which show the potential of improving local service and edge device performance in a cellular network.