Modeling unicast device-to-device communications with SimuLTE

In LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), device-to-device (D2D) transmissions allow two peering User Equipments to communicate directly without using the Evolved Node-B as relay. D2D is regarded as one of the enablers to bring LTE-A in the context of vehicular networks, smart cities, or M2M applications. Research on this topic is mostly carried out through link-level simulations. In this work, we describe instead the modeling of D2D into a system-level simulator, namely SimuLTE, which enables us to analyze the performance of applications and higher-layer protocols using D2D transmission. We first describe the modeling within the SimuLTE architecture, then we validate it and analyze the performance of D2D communications with frequency reuse.