Sum-rate maximization for energy harvesting-aided D2D communications underlaid cellular networks

This paper investigates the beamforming design for sum-rate maximization in energy harvesting (EH)-aided device-to-device (D2D) communications underlaid cellular networks. In the considered system, each receiving cellular or D2D user performs EH while decoding information from the base station (BS) or the paired transmitting D2D user. The objective is to derive optimal beamforming strategies at the BS and power allocations at transmitting D2D users, such that the network sum rate is maximized under EH and transmit power constraints. The original nonconvex problem is convexified by the semidefinite relaxation technique and a reformulation of the objective function with first-order approximation in each algorithm iteration, and solved by an iterative algorithm, based on the concept of the Frank-Wolfe algorithm. Simulation provides numerical validation of the proposed method from various perspectives.