Network-assisted discovery for device-to-device communications

Network-assisted device-to-device (D2D) communications allow two devices to communicate with each other directly using one bidirectional link. Exchange of signaling messages with the base station allows the establishment of D2D communications. The discovery of D2D pairs of devices is an essential part of D2D communications as it provides the base station with all the information necessary to evaluate the possibility of D2D communication for the pair. This paper proposes two discovery algorithms, the centralized fully network-dependent and the semi centralized semi-network-dependent algorithms to identify D2D pairs through the exchange of a number of signaling messages. A comparison between those algorithms is performed with respect to delay and signaling overhead. Simulation results show that the second discovery algorithm is faster and more efficient than the first one in discovering new D2D pairs.