Optimised Pairing–Based Fair Resource Management in LTE‐Advanced Device‐to‐Device Communications

Integrating device‐to‐device (D2D) communications into LTE‐advanced (LTE‐A) networks offers a promising solution to reduce network congestion and improve spectral efficiency. D2D communications allow user equipment (UE) to directly exchange content without involving the base station. This process helps to reduce network traffic and decrease latency. However, interference management and resource allocation remain two significant challenges. This study focuses on the optimal pairing, resource allocation and power assignment in uplink D2D‐enabled LTE‐A networks. We first formally formulate the sum‐rate maximisation problem in a heterogeneous network that includes both cellular and D2D users. We consider multiple D2D pairs in a single cell in our joint optimisation problem and evaluate the performance of the proposed binary power control (BPC)‐based exhaustive search and suboptimal pairing algorithms. We also assess the number of D2D pairs based on network performance. We prove the convergence of the proposed solutions and discuss their computational complexity. We also consider the max–min metric, reformulate the optimisation problem and propose two BPC‐based and heuristic solutions. We evaluate the performance of the proposed methods through simulation experiments. The numerical results indicate that our proposed suboptimal heuristic provides a near approximation to the exhaustive search solution. The results also show that although max–min solutions achieve lower total throughput in the network, they reach acceptable fairness and improve the system's energy efficiency.