Distributed power allocation for D2D communications overlaying OFDMA networks

Device-to-device (D2D) communications are capable of enhancing the total cell throughput, reducing power consumption and increasing the instantaneous data rate. In this paper we propose a distributed power allocation scheme for D2D communications overlaying an OFDMA network, so that D2D communications take place on dedicated resources but are supervised by the BS. The proposed scheme addresses the problem of maximizing the users’ sum rate subject to power constraints, which is known to be nonconvex. By modelling the power allocation problem as a potential game, we can take advantage of the potential games property of converging under better response dynamics. Accordingly, we propose a fully distributed iterative algorithm, where each user updates sequentially and autonomously its power allocation. The proposed method exhibit performance close to the maximum achievable optimum and outperform other schemes presented in the literature.