Network-assisted device-decided channel selection and power control for multi-pair device-to-device (D2D) communications in heterogeneous networks

The device-to-device (D2D) communications can improve the spectrum efficiency with low power and effectively offload the traffic from the macro-eNB. However, the macro/femto/D2D heterogeneous networks face a complicated three-tier interference issue. The completely centralized resource management is not applicable in such three-tier heterogeneous networks. Therefore, we propose a network-assisted device-decided (NADD) scheme to jointly select the channels and adjust the transmission power for D2D devices. In the NADD method, the macro-eNB broadcasts resource allocation instruction to D2D devices. According to the resource allocation instruction and the device's communication quality, D2D devices autonomously and dynamically select the suitable channels and adjust the transmission power. Simulation results show that NADD scheme can significantly improve the total throughput and ensure the link reliability of macrocell users, comparing to both the fixed power scheme and the network-decided (ND) power control scheme.