IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 18, NO.
10, OCTOBER 2014
Fast Pairing of Device-to-Device Link Underlay
for Spectrum Sharing With Cellular Users
Li Wang, Member, IEEE and Huaqing Wu
Abstract—Device-to-device (D2D) communications has attracted
substantial research attention recently owing to its simplicity and
its potential to improve spectrum and energy efficiency within the
existing cellular infrastructure. This work presents a low complex-
ity method for matching D2D links with cellular user equipments
(CUEs) to form partners for spectrum sharing. The overall ob-
jective is to maximize well defined performance metrics of all D2D
links and CUEs after successful pairing under power and QoS con-
straints. We begin by identifying a set of D2D link candidates for
each CUE uplink for a requisite SINR level to reduce the number
of potential pairing searches. More importantly, we present a sim-
ple pairing algorithm to reduce the computational cost well below
the well known Hungarian (Kuhn-Munkres) algorithm used in the
literature for the pairing problem. Our new algorithm exhibits low
complexity and is effective in improving the sum rate of all spec-
trum sharing CUEs and D2D links with modest performance loss.
Index Terms—Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, spec-
trum sharing, power control, sum rate, bi-partite graph.
I. I NTRODUCTION
D EVICE-TO-DEVICE (D2D) communications has re-
cently emerged as a candidate technology in cellular
networks for improving the spectrum efficiency and off-loading
cellular traffics [1]. D2D can serve as an underlay within
the cellular network under cellular control. However, D2D
underlay must limit its interference to its partner cellular user
equipment (CUE). Thus, the issue of pairing D2D links and
CUEs for low-interference spectrum sharing becomes critical.
Well optimized pairing can improve total throughput, reduce
mutual interference, and even assure better secrecy for both
D2D links and CUEs. This work presents a low complexity
pairing algorithm for spectrum sharing between D2D links and
CUEs with strong performance.
Pervious works on pairing D2D and CUE either focus on
one side to make the selection, or attempt exhaustive search
by using classic means such as the Hungarian (Kuhn-Munkres)
algorithm [2]–[4]. Such searches, though optimum, are compu-
tationally costly. The computational complexity grows signifi-
cantly if the CUE and D2D powers must be jointly optimized
while pairing, as shown in [3].
Manuscript received May 23, 2014; revised July 23, 2014; accepted August
6, 2014. Date of publication August 28, 2014; date of current version October 8,
2014. This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China
(No. 61201150 and 61372117), State Major Science and Technology Special
Projects of China (No. 2012ZX03004001),Science Technology Innovation
Foundation for Young Teachers in BUPT (No. 2013RC0202), and Beijing
Higher Education Young Elite Teacher Project (No. YETP0442). The associate
editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was
I.-R. Chen.
The authors are with Beijing Key Laboratory of Work Safety Intelligent
Monitoring, School of Electronic Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China (e-mail: liwang@bupt.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2014.2351400
1089-7798 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1803
This work develops a new pairing approach to achieve high
sum performance while reducing its complexity simultane-
ously. We study a general optimization problem of rate-utility
maximization by considering the various utility functions for
CUEs and D2D links simultaneously. Thus, we focus on how
to match D2D links and CUEs into partners so as to achieve
optimized pairing for maximizing the overall performance met-
ric such as sum data rate of all users. In particular, to reduce
the computation complexity, we divide our pairing selection
approach into two simple steps. We will first narrow a candidate
D2D link set for each CUE, while assuring the required quality
of service (QoS) to both sides in terms of minimum SINR.
Furthermore, we will investigate how to optimize pairing selec-
tion among cooperative CUEs to the D2D links from the pre-
established candidate set while, at the same time, optimizing
the power for each respective pair of CUE and the D2D link.
We organize rest of this paper as follows. Section II describes
the D2D link and CUE pairing problem with simultaneous
power optimization in D2D underlay. We briefly depict the selec-
tion of D2D candidate links for each of the CUEs willing to share
its spectrum before outlining the existing pairing approach
based on the Hungarian (Kuhn-Munkres: KM) algorithm [5].
Section III presents our new algorithm that can substantially
lower the computational complexity. We then present our sim-
ulation test results in Section IV before the conclusion section.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL AND P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
A. Notations and Assumptions
We investigate spectrum sharing for cellular D2D underlay
by focusing on a single cell, subject to their respective min-
imum QoS requirement, where a number of (M ) D2D links
coexist with N CUEs that occupy N orthogonal channels.
We limit our scope to the sharing of cellular uplink (UL)
resources by D2D links. Here, we use C = {1, . . . , N }, and
D = {1, . . . , M } to denote the index sets of CUEs and D2D
links respectively. Note that we assume that the nodes in our
scenario are generally stationary or moving at moderate speed
to allow channel state information (CSI) acquisition. Here we
apply (distance based) large scale path loss channel model for
both CUEs and D2D users [6].
Our basic assumptions are:
• Every active UE uses one unit of resource blocks.
• Each D2D link wants to share at most one unit of resource
block belonging to a particular CUE.
• Base Station (BS) in charge of pairing D2D link and CUE
for spectrum sharing has the following information:
2
— Background noise level σN .
— Uplink gain between CUE i and the BS gi,B and
channel gain of D2D link j, denoted as gj .
— Channel gains of interference links, from the transmit-
ter of D2D link j to the BS, hj,B .
1804 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 18, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2014

of N CUE spectral bands and M orthogonal D2D spectral

bands. The bottom side consists of N empty partners (one for
each CUE) and M active D2D links. Thus, if no D2D link can
share CUE−i’s spectrum while simultaneously satisfying the
constraints, then CUE−i will have only one link with the i−th
empty partner node with an edge weight of
wi,i = max fi , i = 1, . . . , N. (3a)
Pic ≤Pi,max
c ,Pjd =0

Similarly, if a D2D link cannot find any CUE to share spectrum,

Fig. 1. Pairing bi-partite graph.
it will be assigned an edge weight of
— Transmit powers of CUE i(Pic ) and D2D j(Pjd ).
— Channel gain hi,j from CUE i to D2D link j. wN +j,N +j = 0, j = 1, . . . , M (3b)
by connecting with its orthogonal band. All other edge weights
B. Pairing for Spectrum Sharing are defined by
First, we define a maximized information capacity function wi,N +j = max (fi + gj ), i = 1, . . . , N,
P c ≤P c ,P d ≤P d
by considering the achieved data rate for both CUEs and D2D i
c
i,max j
c
j,max
f ≥f , g d ≥g d
links simultaneously, after pairing the CUEs and D2D links for i i,min j j,min

spectrum sharing. We define an indicator variable j = 1, . . . , M. (3c)


1, D2D link-j shares CUE-i channel.
qi,j = (1) III. A N EW PAIRING S TRATEGY
0, otherwise.
Since it is hard to calculate the overall sum rate in one step
We assumed that at most one D2D link  can share at most one jointly, we present an optimization problem that consists of
CUE channel such that i qi,j ≤ 1 and j qi,j ≤ 1. Note that two steps and utilizes a “mutual selection” principle. Step 1
qi,j = 1 implies mutual interference. We can first use fi and gj finds, for each active CUE−i, a set of candidate D2D links
to denote QoS objective functions of CUE−i and D2D link−j, D(i) that can share the spectrum with CUE−i without severely
respectively, that depend on Pic , Pjd , and qi,j . Both CUE and impacting the rate of CUE−i. After narrowing the number
D2D link should have a minimum QoS requirement denoted by of potential pairing options, step 2 presents a low complexity
fic ≥ fi,min
c
and gjd ≥ gj,mind
. Hence our goal is to maximize the pairing algorithm.
sum objective function under power constraints Pic ≤ Pi,max c

and Pjd ≤ Pj,max

d
. As a result, we aim to optimize the following A. D2D Link Candidacy
general maximization problem:
⎛ ⎞ Our method first establishes an admissible D2D link set for
  each CUE, and the CUE to be shared resource as reuse partner.
max ⎝fi + qi,j gj ⎠ (2a) We use D(i) to indicate the admissible candidate D2D set for
{qi,j ,Pic ,Pjd } i j CUE i, representing all the D2D links that have edge connec-
fic ≥ fi,min
c
, gjd ≥ gj,min
d
(2b) tions to CUE−i resource, whereas C (j) denotes the available
Pi ≤ Pi,max , Pj ≤ Pj,max
c c d d
. (2c) CUE resource set for D2D j, representing all CUEs that have
connecting edges to D2D link−j.
The objective for the coordinating BS is to find the best pairing Let ξic and ξjd denote the SINR of CUE i and that of D2D
variable qi,j and the respective power Pic and Pjd to maximize link-j. Instead of presenting a highly complex and nearly
the sum metric for the cell. Here, we can take the sum of CUE intractable combinatorial problem with power optimization,
rate and D2D link rate as the objective. Such problem is non- our approach is to identify a set of D2D links that can coexist
convex combinatorial. The solution requires the optimization of with the active CUE uplinks by simultaneously satisfy a
two constrained variables Pic and Pjd for each possible pairing minimum SINR (rate) requirement ξjd of the D2D link without
of CUE and D2D. It naturally extends to other performance causing strong interference to any CUE uplinks in terms of
metrics such as secrecy rate [7]. SINR, ξic , by guaranteeing their minimum SINR ξi,minc
. Note
that we can obtain ξic ,
C. QoS Constrained Bi-Partite Graph ⎛ ⎞−1

Recall that each D2D user has one of the two modes: D2D ξic = Pic gi,B ⎝ 2 ⎠
qi,j Pjd hj,B + σN , ∀i ∈ C. (4)
underlay (by sharing CUE band) and dedicated mode (with or- j∈D
thogonal channel). Because of the QoS requirement and power
constraints, pairing is not always feasible and some CUEs can Similarly, the j-th D2D link SINR can be expressed as
not share their spectra whereas some D2D links have to be
−1

assigned orthogonal bands (with 0 spectral gain), by using bi- ξjd = Pjd gj qi,j Pic hi,j + σN
2
.
partite graph as shown in Fig. 1. This means that there does i∈C
not need to be an edge linking one CUE spectrum with one
D2D link. Hence, different from [8], we construct a bi-partite We now need to determine which of the D2D links can
graph with N + M nodes on both sides. The top side consists take part in sharing the uplink spectrum resource blocks of the
WANG AND WU: DEVICE-TO-DEVICE LINK UNDERLAY FOR SPECTRUM SHARING WITH CELLULAR USERS
CUEs. Thus, one objective is for the BS to find qi,j . For a large
number of CUEs and D2D links, the optimized pairing problem
becomes a large combinatorial problem.
Different from the scheme illustrated in [3], our goal is to
select admissible candidate D2D set, D(i) , for each CUE i first.
However, we can borrow the idea of picking candidate CUE
set for each D2D presented in [3]. Since the SINR is reflective
of the Shannon rate, here we will take it as the basic mutual
constraint to CUE and D2D to narrow the candidate set. Thus,
we define this candidate set as
1805
pairing search by leveraging the KM algorithm. However, KM
algorithm incurs high complexity, particularly for large number
of potential partners. Thus, to reduce complexity, we also
propose a new simple suboptimum alternative: IPPO (Inverse
Popularity Pairing Order) algorithm aimed at speeding up the
pairing process without significant performance loss, as sum-
marized in Algorithm 1.
 

D(i) = j ∈ D : ξjd Pic , Pjd ≥ ξj,min
d
, (5)

subject to

ξic ≥ ξi,min
c
, Pjd ≤ Pj,max
d
, Pic ≤ Pi,max
c
, ∀i ∈ C, ∀j ∈ D,
c d
where Pi,max and Pj,max denote the power limit of CUE and
d
D2D link respectively, and ξj,min denotes the minimum re-
quired SINR of D2D link-j. Finding this candidate set requires
the BS to check each of the potential D2D links interested in
spectrum sharing.
Once the selection of the candidate set D(i) is identified for
an active CUE−i, we have a set of candidate D2D links that
can coexist with their cellular uplinks (in terms of SINR) while
meeting their own rate requirement.

B. UL Resource Matching and Power Allocation

For each CUE i, we have established a candidate D2D link
set D(i) in the previous section. At most one D2D link in
set D(i) may share CUE−i spectrum that can meet the rate
requirements for itself without hurting CUE simultaneously,
while optimizing the transmit powers for both.
Let Ric and Rjd denote the Shannon rate of CUE−i and
D2D link−j, respectively. Without loss of generality, we can
consider the special case of fi = Ric , and gj = Rjd . Note that
the achievable data rate of CUE i can be expressed as
⎡ ⎤
⎢ Pic gi,B
Ric = log2 ⎣1 + 
qi,j Pjd hj,B + σN
j∈D(i)
Similarly, define a CUE subset for the j−th D2D link
 
C (j) = i : i ∈ C, such that j ∈ D(i) .
Sharing CUE resources, the j−th D2D link achieves rate
⎛ ⎞
⎜ Pjd gj
Rjd = log2 ⎝1 + 
qi,j Pic hi,j + σN
i∈C (j)
Aiming to match more spectrum sharing partners of CUE
and D2D link, IPPO starts with the D2D link with the fewest
edges (least popular) and finds its best match with the largest
sum rate through D2D and CUE power optimization. We then
move down the list with the second D2D link with the next
fewest number of edges and so on. Because we always go to the
remaining least popular D2D link, this algorithm provides bet-
ter opportunity for overall matching success without iteration
(or increasing complexity). This also provides certain fairness
⎥ assurance for D2D nodes with fewer connections. Note that, we
2 ⎦
. (6)
can define different edge weights for different QoS objective
functions as shown in Section II.
Without substantial performance loss, our focus is on the
reduction of computation complexity by IPPO over the tradi-
tional KM. Specifically, we examine two different parts of the
computation time: pairing only (P O) and the total time from
both pairing and power optimization (P P O). As shown in [9],
the P O complexity of KM is O((N + M )3 ), whereas that of
our proposed IPPO is only O(N + M ). On the other hand,
⎟ the complexity of power optimization for KM and IPPO are
2 ⎠. (7) O((N + M )2 ), and O((N + M )) respectively.

IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS AND A NALYSIS

C. Sum Rate Maximization and A Simplified Solution
In our simulation test, we consider the CUEs and D2D links
Consider maximization of sum rate of all CUE-resources:
 within a cell of radius R = 300 m and σN 2
= −40 dBm. The


max Ci,j , Ci,j = Ric + qi,j Rjd . (8) distribution of D2D user equipments (DUE) follows Poisson
qi,j ,Pic ,Pjd
i∈C (j) ,j∈D(i)
Point Process with density μ = 1 nodes/m2 . Select 100 nodes
randomly as the DUEs, from which we pick the closest M
Traditionally, as shown in [8] and [9], one optimum solution to pairs of DUEs to form D2D links. Simultaneously, we assume
the maximum total throughput problem is through exhaustive that a variable number of N conventional CUEs are uniformly
1806
Fig. 2. Sum rate with different number of CUEs.
Fig. 3. Sum rate with different number of D2D links (N = 30).
distributed within the cell. Based on this scenario, we compare
IPPO with the well known KM, IPPO+KM, as well as the
“random” pairing result in terms of achieved sum data rate
and computation time. Notice that, we also consider a new
method that uses the KM algorithm to refine the results ob-
tained from IPPO. In this method labelled as IPPO+KM, after
applying IPPO to generate a subset of bipartite graph edges, we
add another KM refinement step to achieve performance gain
over IPPO. However, since no additional power optimization
is needed to compute new edges, this IPPO+KM refinement
requires very little additional complexity, unlike the full-fledged
KM which must compute all edges through power optimization.
c d
Figs. 2 and 3 illustrate the effects of Pi,max , Pj,max , as well
as the number of CUEs and D2D links on the achieved sum rate.
Fig. 2 shows that the sum rate grows with increasing number of
CUEs because D2D links would have more choices of potential
spectrum resources to share. Similarly, when the number of
CUEs is fixed, more D2D links make it possible for better
pairing with CUE resources, thereby leading to larger sum rate,
as Fig. 3 shows. Figs. 2 and 3 also show that larger transmit
power limits of CUEs and DUEs lead to higher sum rates.
c
Larger Pi,max d
and Pj,max allow each pair to reach higher rate
and hence larger sum data rates. Our IPPO algorithm only ex-
hibits modest performance loss against the high complexity KM
algorithm. IPPO+KM ranks second on the performance when
compared with KM and IPPO, which demonstrates more on
the tradeoff of computation complexity and performance. All of
them achieve significantly higher rates than “Random” pairing.
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 18, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2014
Fig. 4. Computation time with different number of CUEs.
c d
Fixing Pi,max = 24 dBm and Pj,max = 21 dBm, Fig. 4
shows that, as CUE number N grows, the complexity of IPPO
remains nearly unchanged whereas the KM computation time
grows to approximately 3 orders of magnitude higher when
N reaches 200. Since LTE scheduling is for each (1-ms)
subframes, computation time of several seconds leads to very
large scheduling latency. Our results clearly demonstrate the
computation advantage of our newly proposed algorithm with-
out substantial performance loss.
V. C ONCLUSION
We consider the resource sharing problem of D2D underlay
within cellular networks under transmit power and minimum
QoS constraint. We present an augmented bi-partite graph to
capture the constrained sum rate maximization problem for
sharing CUE resource with D2D links. We propose a novel
algorithm to reduce the computation complexity without sac-
rificing much performance over the traditional KM algorithm.
Our proposed formulation and algorithm also apply to other
relevant performance metrics such as secrecy rate.
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