Resource allocation for device-to-device communications based on guard area underlying cellular networks

Device-to-Device (D2D) communications have drawn considerable attention with the obvious advantages of a higher data rate and spectrum efficiency. However, this also brings intra-cell interference due to resource sharing with traditional Cellular users (CUs). An effective resource allocation scheme for D2D communications to maximize the system throughput is developed. This scheme first utilizes the guard area model to restrict the interference between D2D users (DUs) and CUs. Then, a max-flow algorithm is used to match the pair of CUs and DUs and maximize the total sum rate of the communication system. Numeral results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can yield significant throughput gain while maintaining quality for both CUs and DUs.