Distributed Resource Allocation for Relay-Aided Device-to-Device Communication Under Channel Uncertainties: A Stable Matching Approach

Wireless device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular network is a promising concept to improve user experience and resource utilization. Unlike traditional D2D communication where two mobile devices in the proximity establish a direct local link bypassing the base station, in this work we focus on relay-aided D2D communication. Relay-aided transmission could enhance the performance of D2D communication when D2D user equipments (UEs) are far apart from each other and/or the quality of D2D link is not good enough for direct communication. Considering the uncertainties in wireless links, we model and analyze the performance of a relay-aided D2D communication network, where the relay nodes serve both the cellular and D2D users. In particular, we formulate the radio resource allocation problem in a two-hop network to guarantee the data rate of the UEs while protecting other receiving nodes from interference. Utilizing time sharing strategy, we provide a centralized solution under bounded channel uncertainty. With a view to reducing the computational burden at relay nodes, we propose a distributed solution approach using stable matching to allocate radio resources in an efficient and computationally inexpensive way. Numerical results show that the performance of the proposed method is close to the centralized optimal solution and there is a distance margin beyond which relaying of D2D traffic improves network performance.