D2D-based Survival on Sharing for critical communications

Wireless industry, driven by manifold increase in data and devices, is attracting the attention of public safety services for critical communications under disaster scenarios and unpredictable events. In this paper, we present a Device-to-Device (D2D)-based communication mechanism that can serve as an additional alternative to the existing critical communication technologies, used in public safety networks. D2D-based low power transmission and energy saving features make it a perfect candidate for vital communication backup, in a case of a network infrastructure failure or a natural disaster. Our proposed mechanism, referred as Survival on Sharing (SoS), utilizes these D2D features to overcome the mobile devices' power limitation faced during disaster and emergency situations. Our aims are to prolong the battery life and extend the device connectivity in disaster zones. This is achieved by optimizing the amount of valued battery life available in the network. Simulation results show that our proposed mechanism is able to extend devices' usage duration up to 11 hours and reduce the devices' outage probability in comparison to the traditional cellular scheme. Battery lifetime gain ranging from 3.6 to 12% is achieved for varying number of users and coverage areas.