Efficient feedback mechanism and rate adaptation for LTE-based D2D communication

Along with the surge of data traffic amount, Long Term Evolution (LTE)-based Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is emerging as a key data traffic offloading technology. However, current LTE-based D2D communication has limitations such as the lack of feedback mechanism, causing difficulty for efficient radio resource use. In this paper, we propose a feedback mechanism as well as a feedback-based rate adaptation scheme to increase the spectral efficiency of LTE-based D2D communication. In particular, the proposed feedback mechanism between Transmitter (Tx) and Receivers (Rxs) is designed to minimize signaling overhead. Thanks to the feedback mechanism, the proposed rate adaptation scheme makes D2D Tx use the highest Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) level while guaranteeing reliable transmission to all Rxs. Through extensive simulations, we verify that the proposed solution achieves solid goodput performance under various channel environments.