Interference Minimization for Device-to-Device Communications: A Combinatorial Approach

Device-to-device (D2D) communication in an underlaying cellular network is becoming increasingly common in telecommunication systems, and it will play a vital role in the fifth generation (5G) and beyond. The base stations manage the cellular users. The D2D pairs communicate directly without using the base station. This direct and short-range communication of D2D pairs improve the energy efficiency. It also enables inter-device applications such as location-based emergency services, commercial advertisements, etc. D2D pairs share spectrum resources from cellular users. This sharing generates a significant amount of interference in mobile communication. We study the problem of assigning resources from cellular users to D2D pairs such that the total interference is minimized subject to a minimum target sum rate. We give a two-phase combinatorial algorithm which computes an allocation of resources subject to the sum rate constraint. For the case when the interference between any communicating D2D pair is uniform, the algorithm finds an optimal solution in polynomial time.