Analysis of Underlaid D2D-Enhanced Cellular Networks: Interference Management and Proportional Fair Scheduler

Device-to-device (D2D) communications have been proposed as a promising technology to improve network capacity and user experiences in the future mobile networks such as heterogeneous networks with densely deployed small cells, but it has not yet been fully incorporated into the existing cellular networks. Interference management is one of the critical issues when D2D communications using uplink resources and coexisting with conventional cellular communications, especially in the ultra-dense networks (UNDs). In this paper, we address the critical issue of interference management by a mode selection method, which is based on the maximum received signal strength (MRSS) for each D2D transmitter (TU). To analyze the capacity of a more practical D2D-enhanced network, we consider that the typical user is no longer a random user, i.e., random user selection by a round-robin (RR) scheduler, as assumed in most studies in the literature. Instead, a cellular user with the maximum proportional fair (PF) metric is chosen by its serving base station as the typical user, which is referred to as the PF scheduler in the cellular tier. Furthermore, we theoretically study the performance in terms of the coverage probability and the area spectral efficiency (ASE) for both the cellular network and the D2D one with the consideration of the PF scheduler in UDNs. Analytical results are obtained, and the accuracy of the proposed analytical framework is validated through Monte Carlo simulations. Through our theoretical and numerical analyses, we quantify the performance gains brought by D2D communications and the PF scheduler in cellular networks, and we find an optimum mode selection threshold β to maximize the total ASE in the network.