On the analysis of cellular networks with caching and coordinated device-to-device communication

In this paper, we develop a comprehensive analytical framework for cellular networks that are enhanced with coordinated device-to-device (D2D) communication, where the D2D devices are equipped with content caching capabilities. The base station (BS) coordinates the D2D communication by establishing a D2D link between the requesting user and the nearest D2D helper within the same cell if the latter contains the requested content, otherwise, the BS serves the user itself. The motivation behind restricting D2D pairs within a macro cell is to make coordinated D2D communication realizable as the BS can keep track of the content of the devices without the increased overhead of inter-BS coordination. This approach is similar to LTE direct, where D2D pairing is managed by the BS. We model the locations of BS and D2D helpers using a homogeneous Poisson point process (HPPP). The distribution of the distance between the tagged user and its neighboring D2D helper within the cell is derived using disk approximation for the Voronoi cell, which is shown to be reasonably accurate. We fully characterize the cellular and D2D coverage and the link spectral efficiency of such a network. Our results reveal that cache enabled D2D communication becomes more effective as the requesting user moves away from the BS and high performance gains can be achieved compared to conventional cellular networks, especially when the popularity distribution is skewed and most popular files are requested.