Network-Assisted Device Discovery for LTE-based D2D Communication Systems

Device-to-device (D2D) communication is being considered as a traffic offloading solution as well as a public safety network solution in cellular networks specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Discovering proximity devices before direct communication is one of the challenges in realizing D2D communication. This paper proposes an efficient network-assisted device discovery method for D2D systems operating under Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular networks. Moreover, it provides a probabilistic model for predicting the worst case performance of the proposed method. Preliminary evaluations show that the proposed discovery method has a high probability of device discoverability within a given discovery interval.