EARS: Collaborative Research: Laying the Foundations of Social Network-Aware Cellular Device-to-Device Communications

提供对快速扩展的移动社交应用套件的无处不在的访问已经给现代无线网络带来了压力，促使对新技术的需求，以优化稀缺的无线电资源的使用。移动设备之间通过可靠和无处不在的蜂窝网络基础设施进行的设备到设备(D2D)通信构成了进一步加快移动社交服务渗透的最有前途的技术之一。与蓝牙等短距离和有限容量的传统D2D技术相比，蜂窝D2D提供了更长的传输距离、更好的频谱共享、更高的容量、有保证的服务质量以及更广泛的应用和服务。由于其巨大的潜力，D2D现在被学术界和标准化机构视为新兴的第5代(5G)无线系统的基石技术。将蜂窝D2D用于移动社交应用需要解决各种技术挑战，这些挑战的特点是内容相关性等社会因素与网络控制的资源分配和干扰管理等无线功能之间的强烈相互作用。该项目通过引入一种新的网络优化框架来应对这些挑战，该框架同时考虑了社交领域和无线领域，适用于确保通过蜂窝D2D通信提供高速、高质量的社交网络服务。具体地说，将开发新的面向D2D的社会技术指标和新颖的半分布式资源分配和内容交付算法，以优化社交网络感知的D2D系统的服务质量。此外，将引入分层资源分配工具，以优化D2D上的社交内容分发，同时最大限度地扩大数据在多个D2D连接上的传播。结果将在两个平台上进行评估和部署：一个是基于开源Android设备的大规模试验床，用于验证方法和探索新的社交指标；另一个是软件定义的无线电平台，用于在现实的蜂窝环境中分析建议方案的性能。

Providing ubiquitous access to the rapidly expanding suite of mobile social applications has strained modern-day wireless networks, motivating the need for new technologies to optimize the usage of the scarce radio resources. Device-to-device (D2D) communications between mobile devices over the reliable and pervasive cellular network infrastructure constitutes one of the most promising technologies for further accelerating the penetration of mobile social services. As compared to conventional D2D over short-range and limited-capacity technologies such as Bluetooth, D2D over cellular provides longer transmission ranges, improved spectrum sharing, higher capacities, guaranteed quality-of-service, and a broader range of applications and services. Owing to its promising potential, D2D is now viewed by both academia and standardization bodies as a cornerstone technology in emerging 5th generation (5G) wireless systems.Leveraging cellular D2D for mobile social applications requires addressing a variety of technical challenges that are characterized by a strong interplay between social factors such as content correlation, and wireless features such as network-controlled resource allocation and interference management. This project addresses these challenges by introducing a novel network optimization framework, cognizant of both social and wireless realms, suitable for ensuring the delivery of high-speed, high-quality social networking services over cellular D2D communications. Specifically, new D2D-oriented socio-technological metrics and novel semi-distributed resource allocation and content delivery algorithms will be developed to optimize the quality-of-service of social network-aware D2D systems. In addition, hierarchical resource allocation tools will be introduced to optimize the distribution of social content over D2D while maximizing the spread of data over multiple D2D connections. The results will be evaluated and deployed on two platforms: a large-scale testbed based on open-source Android devices for validating the approach and exploring new social metrics, and a software defined radio platform to analyze the performance of the proposed schemes within a realistic cellular setting.