Multi-hop and D2D communications for extending coverage in public safety scenarios

In this paper, we consider the use of device-to-device (D2D) communications for extending the coverage area of active base stations in the case of public safety communications with partial coverage. A 3GPP standard compliant system level simulator is developed for D2D and heterogeneous network (HetNet) technologies considering public safety scenarios. The simulator is used to evaluate the performance of D2D multi-hop communications underlying cellular networks for the case of partial coverage. Improvements in energy and spectral efficiency, when compared with the case of direct user equipment-to-base station communications, are demonstrated. Moreover, user equipment (UE) power control techniques are applied to reduce the effects of interference from neighboring D2D links.