A Novel Multi-Hop Routing Protocol for D2D Communications in 5G

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication in 5G networks is designed to offload the traffic on the core networks and backhaul links, and to provide faster and energy-efficient access to the devices within a cell. However, efficient provision of D2D communication presents several challenges, including multi-hop routing to the devices that are not immediate neighbours. Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) is a popular protocol commonly applied to Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET); howe ver, its direct application in 5G environment is not straightforward. In this paper, a new multi-hop routing protocol for D2D communications in 5G network is proposed. The protocol modifies the conventional DSR protocol and takes advantages of 5G cellular infrastructure to make fast routing decisions. The proposed protocol offers low overhead over the conventional DSR, in terms of the number of control messages in the D2D communication, thus saving for the devices during route finding process. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol also achieves better results in terms of D2D routing success probability.