Optimal Resource and Power Allocation with Relay Selection for RF/RE Energy Harvesting Relay-Aided D2D Communication

Device-to-device (D2D) communication is considered as a promising technology for improving both the spectral and energy efficiencies of cellular networks by reusing the resources of conventional cellular users (CUs) for direct communication of two nearby devices in a spatial manner. When the channel between the two D2D devices is highly attenuated, it is necessary to use an intermediate relay to achieve reliable and flexible relay-aided D2D communication. In order to motivate the cooperative relays to participate, it is assumed that they can harvest energy from radio frequency (RF) signals based on the power splitting (PS) protocol as well as renewable energy (RE) sources. However, resource sharing between the cellular and relay-aided D2D links leads to mutual interference that degrades their sum rate. Considering the energy-harvesting relays (EHRs) and downlink (DL) resource sharing, this paper aims to maximize the sum rate of both the links without degrading the quality of service (QoS) requirements of all users. Our maximization problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem that cannot be solved in a straightforward manner. Therefore, we propose a low complexity algorithm, namely the resource and power allocation with relay selection EH-aided algorithm (RPRS-EH), which determines the reuse partners, the PS factor sub-optimal value with optimal links power allocation, and provides two different strategies for optimal relay selection. The numerical results show the behavior of the proposed algorithm under various parameters as well as its considerable performance when compared to one of the most recent algorithms in terms of the links sum rate and relay energy efficiency.