Joint Resource and Power Management for D2D Communication Across Multiple Service Providers

Device-to-device (D2D) communication broadens the applicability of cellular networks, which permits user equipments (UEs) to converse with each other without the relay by a base station (BS). D2D pairs can reuse the spectrum resources allocated to cellular UEs but they would cause interference. How to well manage resources and transmitted power for UEs is critical. This article considers a radio access network (RAN) sharing scenario, where multiple service providers (SPs) collocate in the BS and have dedicated resources. To serve the maximum UEs, we propose a joint resource allocation and power control with RAN sharing (JAPS) scheme. Each SP allocates the dedicated resource to UEs and decides initial power to meet their signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) demands and restrain interference. Then, SPs can borrow resources from each other (i.e., inter-SP loan) to serve more UEs and better resource utilization. Finally, the power of senders is carefully adjusted to improve the signal quality. Simulation results show that JAPS can achieve a high service ratio, improve D2D throughput, and raise energy efficiency.