Wireless cellular networks feature two emerging technological trends. The first is the direct Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, which enables direct links between the wireless devices that reutilize the cellular spectrum and radio interface. The second is that of Machine-Type Communications (MTC), where the objective is to attach a large number of low-rate low-power devices, termed Machine-Type Devices (MTDs) to the cellular network. MTDs pose new challenges to the cellular network, one if which is that the low transmission power can lead to outage problems for the cell-edge devices. Another issue imminent to MTC is the that can lead to overload of the radio interface. In this paper we explore the opportunity opened by D2D links for supporting MTDs, since it can be desirable to carry the MTC traffic not through direct links to a Base Station, but through a nearby relay. MTC is modeled as a fixed-rate traffic with an outage requirement. We propose two network-assisted D2D schemes that enable the cooperation between MTDs and standard cellular devices, thereby meeting the MTC outage requirements while maximizing the rate of the broadband services for the other devices. The proposed schemes apply the principles Opportunistic Interference Cancellation and the Cognitive Radio's underlaying. We show through analysis and numerical results the gains of the proposed schemes.
In contrast, in this paper we motivate that the coverage of MTDs can be enhanced through the use of the D2D communication paradigm. We note that within the literature dedicated to D2D, the synergies to be gained by combining MTC and D2D have not until now been identified, although the authors of @cite_24 have motivated that the use of relaying in the uplink direction in cellular network is one of the key aspects to enable MTC within a cellular network.
@cite_24
1988701064
Relaying can replace one transmission over a long distance with several transmissions over shorter distances, and the total transmission power of mobile stations thus can be lower in the case of relaying. As such, the relaying concept and protocols in a cellular environment have been much discussed in the literature recently. We mathematically analyze the idea of uplink relaying schemes, using a simple model that represents their essential functions. In order to simplify our performance analysis, we assume that the originator of a packet sets the maximum number of hops to the base station to be 2. Our results indicate that the performance benefits of relaying are significant