Performance Evaluation of the Dynamic Multi-hop in Proximity Radio Access Network

The Proximity Radio Access Network(P-RAN) is effective in minimizing small coverage holes in addition to improving the system capacity in high frequency bands cellular networks of future generations. [1] Proximity Link (PL) is expected to operate at out-of-band high frequencies for simplicity. Before PL can be completely standardized in 3GPP,Wi-Fi Direct(WFD) technology can be used because it enables 5G devices to directly form a single-hop D2D communication network through service discovery, information acquisition, and independent decision-making. In this paper, we design a P-RAN based on WFD protocol for devices to form multi-hop D2D communication network. Each device within this network can offload data to the neighboring devices, and finally relay to the cellular network. In order to study the performance and device energy consumption of such multi-hop P-RAN, we first studied the energy consumption model of 5G devices, and verified the rationality of the model by comparing the device energy consumption output from the actual laboratory test and simulation platform. Then, the performance of the multi-hop P-RAN was comprehensively evaluated. The key performance indicators such as throughput rate, latency and device power consumption in typical application scenarios were obtained, which provided accurate data basis for GO selection, networking scheme and data offloading algorithm optimization involved in P-RAN performance improvement, and to facilitate progress in the proximity network.