Scalable D2D Communications for Frequency Reuse ≫ 1 in 5G

Proximity-based applications are becoming fast growing markets suggesting that device-to-device (D2D) communications is becoming an essential part of the future mobile data networks. We propose scalable admission and power control methods for D2D communications underlay cellular networks to increase the reuse of frequency resources and thus network capacity while maintaining QoS to all users. In practice, as D2D communications will generate a new layer of interference, it is essential to take D2D interference into account in inter-cell interference coordination for multi-cell communications. The aim of the proposed methods is to maximize the number of D2D links under QoS constraints, therefore maximizing network frequency reuse in a practical 5G multi-cell environment. Different schemes are designed for applications that have different levels of complexity and availability of channel state information. Numerical results show that by using D2D and the proposed multi-cell interference coordination and low power transmission method, the network spectral efficiency can be increased by as much as ten times, while low outage probability can be assured to provide QoS for all users.