Optimal Virtualized Resource Slicing for Device-to-Device Communications

The Device-to-Device (D2D) communication principle is envisaged to become the key enabler of direct localized communication between mobile nodes that will propel a plethora of novel location-based services. On parallel efforts, virtualization of the Radio Access Network (RAN) is rising as a primal technology for emerging and future wireless networks in which multiple mobile network providers can dynamically share underlying radio resources based on the physical infrastructure. In essence, this work shortens the gap between these two important areas by proposing a set of optimization problem formulations to extend previous works on RAN virtualization and explicitly provide resource slicing for D2D communications. To this end, we aim to yield upper bounds on network performance by devising optimal D2D resource slicing via mathematical programming formulations. In addition, sub-optimal low complexity algorithms, amenable to practical (real-time) implementation, are detailed. Via a wide set of numerical investigations, we show that the proposed solution achieves significant gains in terms of system throughput compared to previous related resource slicing techniques which are D2D oblivious.