Energy-Aware Radio Resource Management in D2D-Enabled Multi-Tier HetNets

Hybrid networks consisting of both millimeter wave (mmWave) and microwave (μW) capabilities are strongly contested for next-generation cellular communications. A similar avenue of current research is device-to-device (D2D) communications, where users establish direct links with each other rather than using central base stations. However, a hybrid network, where D2D transmissions coexist, requires special attention in terms of efficient resource allocation. This paper investigates dynamic resource sharing between network entities in a downlink transmission scheme to maximize energy efficiency (EE) of the cellular users (CUs) served by either (μW) macrocells or mmWave small cells while maintaining a minimum quality-of-service (QoS) for the D2D users. To address this problem, first, a self-adaptive power control mechanism for the D2D pairs is formulated, subject to an interference threshold for the CUs while satisfying their minimum QoS level. Subsequently, an EE optimization problem, which is aimed at maximizing the EE for both CUs and D2D pairs, has been solved. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm, which studies the inherent tradeoffs between system EE, system sum rate, and outage probability for various QoS levels and varying densities of D2D pairs and CUs.