Socially aware resource allocation for device-to-device communication in downlink OFDMA networks

A two-hop socially aware resource allocation scheme is proposed for device-to-device communication in the downlink of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access networks. An optimization problem has been formulated with the objective to maximize the overall network utility and the data rate achieved by the users of a network plagued by limited bandwidth, limited power and user selfishness. Degree and eigenvalue centrality metrics capture the social awareness of the users. The mixed integer non-linear programming problem formulated is solved using the advanced integrated multidimensional modeling system optimization solvers. The proposed scheme is compared to conventional allocation schemes using system spectral efficiency, system fairness index and overall network utility performance metrics. Numerical results show that employing the proposed scheme in dense networks achieves performance improvement of approximately 75% in terms of spectral efficiency, up to 50% in terms of fairness and up to 7% in terms of utility over the conventional schemes.