Device-to-device discovery based on 3GPP system level simulations

Device-to-device (D2D) communication as an underlay to cellular networks has gained increasing popularity as a technology component to LTE-Advanced. Through D2D communications, user equipments (UEs) in close proximity to each other, may communicate directly instead of through the eNodeB. This helps to achieve better performance than that offered via eNodeB (two-hops) by offloading eNodeB resources, and enables new types of services. This paper provides an overview of the new agreements in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) Radio Access Networks (RAN) related to evaluation methodology and channel modeling for D2D discovery and communications. We also present a system level simulation environment based on 3GPP assumptions and a performance evaluation of three different D2D discovery algorithms.