Quality of experience-centric management in LTE-A mobile networks: The Device-to-Device communication paradigm

Device-to-Device (D2D) communications are planned to become an indispensable part of future mobile networks. A lot of attention has been paid to this new communication paradigm, due to the important benefits it brings for both cellular operators and end-users. Standardization efforts towards enabling D2D connections have started in Release 12 of the Long Term Evolution-Advanced standard and are expected to continue in next releases. Under this perspective, and realizing that the main asset of D2D is the enhancement of the user experience, we propose a Quality of Experience driven framework for the management of this new type of communications. Simulation results show that this framework is able to capture and enhance the overall experience of mobile users, and, thus, allow for proportionate financial benefits for operators.