On the Performance of Device-to-Device Communication: a Distance-based Analysis

Allowing a Device-to-Device (D2D) communication mode in a cellular network is a feature that might improve the system performance due to a better (re)use of radio resources and a reduced congestion when several users located at the same area want to communicate with each other. The design of an efficient D2D communication mode with minimal interference to the cellular network is a key problem for future communication systems. In this work, we study the impact of the distance between communicating and interfering nodes and illustrate the benefits of D2D communication in a cellular network by comparing its performance in terms of total rate with that of a conventional cellular communication mode. The obtained results show that the use of D2D communication might provide considerable gains, but strongly depends on the distances among the involved nodes.