Uplink resource allocation for relay-aided device-to-device communication

The device-to-device (D2D) communications mode has been regarded as an effective technique for solving/relieving the contradiction between the exponentially increased data traffic requirements of mobile customers and the essence of scarcity of radio resources in wireless communication networks. In the presence of unfavorable direct communication links between D2D peers, cooperative relays may play an important role in enhancing both reliability and flexibility of D2D communications. Aiming at maximizing the sum throughout of the network with a low computation complexity, a new scheme, which jointly considers a number of critical aspects, such as power control, interference limit based on the location information, optimal relay selection based on delineated area, and optimal link selection based range division, etc., is proposed in this paper. Numerical results reveal that the proposed scheme is capable of substantially improving the system's performance compared with either the existing brute-force technique or the area-division scheme. Furthermore, the proposed scheme also exhibits its advantages over the existing techniques in terms of computational complexity.