Wireless communications with greater bandwidth efficiency and improved network throughput
In existing wireless cellular networks, all data traffic must go through base stations regardless of the location of user equipment (UE), even if two UEs are very close. When UEs are at the edge of a mobile, transmit power and data rate issues arise. One way to overcome this problem and efficiently handle localised group communication is to enable direct communication between UEs, or D2D communication. D2D communication underlaying cellular networks is considered an important component of future cellular systems, and is poised to become an important technology in networks. The EU-funded CODEC (Cellular network based device-to-device wireless communications) project focused on resource management (RM) in cellular D2D communications, which is indispensable for achieving spectral and energy efficiency and providing quality of service (QoS) to different applications. Project partners developed a generic analytical framework to investigate the performance of D2D communications as an underlay to cellular networks with respect to spectral and energy efficiency. Using the analytical framework as a basis, they then developed RM schemes for D2D communications in order to optimise network performance under practical limitations. These include power constraints, data rate and QoS requirements for various applications. Researchers extended the framework to accompany fractional frequency reuse – an important emerging technology in wireless cellular networks. They set up a software-based simulation platform to simulate and evaluate the proposed RM schemes concerning spectral and energy efficiency. In addition, a hardware-based test bed was also prepared to test D2D communication under a central control. Lastly, the CODEC team successfully demonstrated the feasibility of implementing D2D in cellular networks. The results can be applied to provide high QoS for proximity-based mobile social networking. By introducing an innovative concept of grouping D2D nodes and proposing a generic analytical framework, CODEC will ensure that optimal RM schemes can be developed while considering various proximity-based applications in a systematic way.
Keywords
Wireless communications, device-to-device, D2D communication, cellular networks, CODEC
