SCUBA: An In-Device Multiplexed Protocol for Sidelink Communication on Unlicensed Bands

Device-to-device communication (D2D) is a key enabler for connecting devices together to form the Internet of Things (IoT)
[1]
. A growing issue with IoT networks is the increasing number of IoT devices congesting the spectral resources of the cellular bands. Operating D2D in unlicensed band alleviates this issue by offloading network traffic from the licensed bands, while also reducing the associated licensing costs. To this end, we present a new low-cost radio access technology (RAT) protocol, called sidelink communications on unlicensed bands (SCUBA), which can be implemented on cellular devices such that it coexists with the legacy cellular protocol by operating as a secondary RAT in a time division multiplexed manner using the existing radio hardware. SCUBA is compatible on different types of cellular devices including the low-complexity half-duplex frequency-division duplex machine type communication (MTC) user equipments. SCUBA provides flexible sidelink (SL) latency and battery life tradeoff using a discontinuous reception procedure, which ensures that it is applicable across a wide range of use cases. We prove the effectiveness of our protocol with analyses and simulation results of the medium access control layer of SCUBA using different types of MTC traffic for both SL and the underlying cellular communication.