On the Capacity Gain of Multi-Hop Cellular Networks With Opportunistic Networking and D2D: A Space-Time Graph-Based Evaluation

Previous studies have shown that device-centric wireless technologies, including multi-hop cellular networks (MCNs) and device-to-device communications (D2D), can increase the cellular network capacity. This letter progresses the current state of the art by deriving (using space-time graphs) the upper-bound capacity gains that can be further achieved when integrating efficiency-driven opportunistic networking into device-centric wireless networks. The increase is obtained without modifying the radio interface, and is not constrained to any particular radio interface.