Interference Management using Power Control for Device-to-Device Communication in Future Cellular Network

There are many scenarios that have been proposed for fifth generation (5G) networks. Some of them, if implemented, will bring fundamental changes at the architectural and node level. One example of such proposed technologies is device-to-device (D2D) communications which will change the nature of conventional cellular network design. D2D permits direct communication between two or more user devices without intervention of the base station (i.e. eNB). D2D can ensure network performance improvement over the traditional cellular network, because it can offload the mobile data traffic from the other devices. However, applying D2D features in a cellular network will bring about more complex interference problems, since D2D communication uses the same band as its underlying cellular communication network. The aim of this research is to investigate interference-related problems caused by D2D communications, affecting the underlying cellular networks, during downlink and uplink transmissions. The paper examines the use of power control methods to mitigate interference. A comparison is offered between fixed power level (FC) with or without power control, and adaptive power controls using two methods (AC1 and AC2), on a base station or on each of the D2D devices, based on the measured signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR). The simulation results show that both power control methods contribute to improvement of network performance. AC1 and AC2 can improve SINR by about 1 dB and 0.5 dB compared to FC in a downlink transmission, and by 0.5 dB in an uplink transmission.