Power Control with Variable Target SINR for D2D Communications Underlying Cellular Networks

Device-to-Device (D2D) communications underlying cellular networks appears as a promising solution to increase network capacity and offload the cellular network through a direct link with reduced congestion. However, D2D communications can generate significant interference to the cellular network when the same resources are shared by both systems. Therefore, interference management techniques such as Power Control (PC) are required to keep the interference under control. In this paper, we provide a performance assessment of a PC algorithm with variable target Signal to Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) applied to cellular and D2D communications, which is called Soft Dropping (SD). Simulation results have shown that the SD algorithm applied to D2D communications can improve the system spectral efficiency of cellular communications in 14% and still significantly reduce the power of D2D transmitters in 49% without harm the system spectral efficiency achieved by D2D receivers. Moreover, by allowing a reduction on the performance of D2D communications, the cellular communications can be further improved with additional power saving of D2D transmitters.