Interference Aware Channel Assignment Algorithm for D2D Multicast Underlying Cellular Networks

Device-to-device (D2D) multicast has become a promising technology to provide specific services within a small geographical region with a high data rate, low delay and low energy consumption. However, D2D multicast communications are allowed to reuse the same channels with cellular uplinks and result in mutual interference in a cell. In this paper, an intelligent channel assignment algorithm is designed in D2D underlaid cellular networks with the target of maximizing network throughput. We first model the channel assignment problem to be a throughput maximizing problem which is NP-hard. To solve the problem in a feasible way, a novel channel assignment algorithm is proposed. The key idea is to find the appropriate cellular communications and D2D multicast groups to share a channel without causing critical interference, i.e., finding a channel for a D2D multicast group which generates the least interference to network based on current channel assignment status. In order to show the efficacy and effectiveness of our proposed algorithm, a novel search algorithm is proposed to find the near-optimal solution as the baseline for comparisons. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm improves the network throughput.