On the use of device-to-device communications for QoS and data rate enhancement in LTE public safety networks

In this paper, device-to-device (D2D) communications are investigated in the framework of LTE public safety networks. A clustering approach to enhance the performance of public safety D2D networks is proposed. In each cluster, a single device, the cluster head, is selected to communicate with the base station. It would then relay the information to/from the other cluster members. The performance of the proposed method is analyzed in both the uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) directions. It is compared to the scenario without D2D collaboration, and it is shown to lead to significant enhancements in terms of data rates and video quality of service (QoS).