D2D Communication for Disaster Recovery in Cellular Networks

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication, enabling nearby user equipments (UEs) to directly communicate with each other bypassing the cellular base stations, holds great promise for extending cellular coverage in the case of a network infrastructure failure or a natural disaster. To study the effect of D2D communication on cellular network of disaster area, this paper first adopts multi-hop D2D relays for routing protocol, and then applies stochastic geometry theory to derive an analytical expression for success delivery probability, i.e., the probability that data from a user equipment is delivered successfully to its desired one. Remarkably, success delivery probability can be used to illustrate the efficiency of D2D communication in alleviating the damage caused by the disaster.