A Comprehensive Survey on Mobility-Aware D2D Communications: Principles, Practice and Challenges

Device-to-device (D2D) communication proposes a new epitome in mobile networking to avail data exchange between physically proximate devices. The exploitation of D2D communication enables mobile operators to harvest short range communications for improving network performance and corroborating proximity-based services. In this paper, we investigate mobility aspects of D2D communication, which are indispensable for the adoption and implementation of D2D communication technology. We present an extensive review of the state-of-the-art problems and the corresponding solutions for encouraging the exploitation of mobility to assist D2D communication. Specifically, by identifying the mobility models, traces, problems, requirements, and features of different proposals, we discuss the lessons learned and summarize the advantages of mobility-aware D2D communication. We also present open problems and highlight future research directions concerning D2D communication applications in real-life scenarios. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive survey to address mobility-aware D2D communication, which offers insight to the underlying problems and provides the potential solutions.