Distributed Resource Allocation in Device-to-Device Enhanced Cellular Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a distributed interference management algorithm for D2D-enhanced cellular networks, achieving significant throughput gains with minimal coordination while maintaining cellular service quality.

Contribution

It introduces a novel distributed signaling-based algorithm for interference management in hybrid D2D-cellular networks, addressing the non-convex optimization challenge efficiently.

Findings

Algorithm converges quickly

Achieves significant throughput gain

Maintains cellular service levels

Abstract

Cellular network performance can significantly benefit from direct device-to-device (D2D) communication, but interference from cochannel D2D communication limits the performance gain. In hybrid networks consisting of D2D and cellular links, finding the optimal interference management is challenging. In particular, we show that the problem of maximizing network throughput while guaranteeing predefined service levels to cellular users is non- convex and hence intractable. Instead, we adopt a distributed approach that is computationally extremely efficient, and requires minimal coordination, communication and cooperation among the nodes. The key algorithmic idea is a signaling mechanism that can be seen as a fictional pricing mechanism, that the base stations optimize and transmit to the D2D users, who then play a best response (i.e., selfishly) to this signal. Numerical results show that our algorithms converge quickly, have low overhead, and achieve a significant throughput gain, while maintaining the quality of cellular links at a predefined service level.