Fine-grained resource allocation for cooperative device-to-device communication in cellular networks

Data traffic in cellular networks has dramatically surged in recent years due to the booming growth of various mobile applications. It is hence crucial to increase network capacity to accommodate new applications and services. In this article, we propose a promising concept of cooperative device-to-device communication to improve resource utilization in cellular networks. Based on a novel fine-grained resource allocation scheme, we study the problem of maximizing the minimum rate among multiple wireless links by jointly considering relay assignment, transmission scheduling, and channel allocation. Simulation results show that our proposed solutions can significantly increase resource utilization in cellular networks.