Socially aware cluster formation and radio resource allocation in D2D networks

Due to the popularity of mobile user devices, D2D communications become a key technology to improve local services in the next generation cellular networks. However, the benefits count on efficient radio resource allocation between cellular links and D2D links, which poses critical challenges. By exploiting the network knowledge extracted from underlying mobile social networks (MSNs), this article proposes a socially aware D2D communication scheme to improve the spectrum and energy efficiency in cellular networks. First, by jointly considering the social and network knowledge, we propose a cluster formation scheme to categorize a group of UEs into multiple D2D clusters. Within each cluster, highly spectrum-efficient D2D multicasting (from the cluster head, i.e., a D2D transmitter UE to multiple cluster member UEs) is enabled. Next, a half-duplex scheme and a full-duplex scheme are proposed to coordinate the channel sharing between the cellular links and the D2D links. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes can form D2D clusters rationally among a group of UEs, and therefore largely increase the spectrum and energy efficiency of the network.