Energy-Efficient SWIPT-Empowered D2D Mode Selection

While mode selection has been envisioned as the most cost-effective way to address the interference issue in Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, existing works have been largely conducted without consideration of the energy depletion of devices. In this paper we investigate simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) empowered mode selection based on stochastic geometry. As a mean of solving it, system energy efficiency is formulated by determining the closed-form ergodic energy-harvested and ergodic capacity of D2D and cellular users in reuse, dedicated, and cellular communication modes with the time switching and power splitting architectures of SWIPT. We then leverage the derived results, along with the energy efficiency to design an energy-efficient mode selection mechanism. Our simulation results show that the developed mechanism is able to select the best mode for D2D communication with better energy efficiency, especially in an ultra-dense cellular network as compared with a state-of-the-art mode selection approach.