WiFi Direct and LTE D2D in action

With the evolution of high-performance multi-radio smartphones, Device-to-Device (D2D) communications became an attractive solution for enhancing the performance of cellular networks. Although D2D communications have been widely studied within past few years, the majority of the literature is confined to new theoretical proposals and did not consider implementation challenges. In fact, the implementation feasibility of D2D communications and its challenges are still a relevant research question. In this paper, we introduce a protocol that focuses on D2D communications using LTE and WiFi Direct technologies. We also show that currently available WiFi Direct features permits to deploy the D2D paradigm on top of the LTE cellular infrastructure, without requiring any fundamental change in LTE protocols. © 2013 IEEE.