On Transmission Mode Selection in D2D-Enhanced Small Cell Networks

• Published in: IEEE wireless communications letters Vol. 6; no. 5; pp. 618 - 621
• Main Authors: Maghsudi, Setareh, Niyato, Dusit
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.10.2017
• Subjects: Device to device communications; Device-to-device communication; Interference; Microcell networks; Rayleigh channels; Sensors; small cell network; Throughput; transmission mode selection
• ISSN: 2162-2337; 2162-2345
• DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2017.2723558

We consider a small cell network enhanced with the possibility of D2D communications. In such networks, there are two possible transmission modes: 1) two-hop or indirect transmission via a small cell base station (SBS) and 2) one-hop or direct transmission. Transmission via an SBS is performed on a channel allocated by the SBS, and hence it is interference-free. Direct transmission, in contrast, is performed only if a primary channel is idle, and is impaired by the interference resulted from the lack of coordination. Despite being interference-free, the indirect mode might be inefficient due to high radio resource consumption, latency, and complexity. Since implementing a central controller as well as obtaining channel/network knowledge is costly, users need to choose the optimal transmission mode in a distributed manner given no prior information. In this letter, we first characterize the utility of each transmission mode. We then solve the mode selection problem using a bandit model.