Architecture and Protocols for Inter-cell Device-to-Device Communication in 5G Networks

The massive admiration of cellular devices has stimulated a flourishing growth of high data rate wireless services, which has sparked an insisting need for more efficient spectrum usage as well as reduced power consumption. This has given rise to Device-to-Device (D2D) communication, which offloads the relaying burden of the base station to direct links between the users. Recent studies have shown that D2D communication results in higher data rates, lower energy consumption and time delay. In this paper, the architecture and a set of protocols for enabling inter-cell D2D communication in 5G networks have been proposed. More specifically, device discovery and session setup protocols for different applications have been presented.