Energy-efficient opportunistic forwarding in multi-hop cellular networks using device to device communications

Abstract

Cellular networks face significant challenges as a result of the growth of cellular data traffic, with a significant portion of such traffic being delay tolerant. Multi-hop Cellular Networks (MCN) can help address the foreseen capacity and energy-efficiency constraints of cellular networks through the integration of cellular and Device to Device (D2D) communications. To this aim, this work proposes and studies the use of opportunistic store, carry and forward mechanisms in MCN networks to increase energy efficiency for delay tolerant traffic. In particular, the study first derives an analytical framework to identify in two hop scenarios the optimum mobile relay location and the location from which the mobile relay should start forwarding the information to the celular base station in order to minimize the overall energy consumption. The derived optimum configuration is then used as a benchmark for the development of a context-based opportunistic MCN forwarding scheme that exploits context information provided by the cellular network. Numerical and simulation results demonstrate that significant energy benefits (above 90%) can be achieved through the use of opportunistic forwarding in MCN networks.