Discovery Signal Design and Its Application to Peer-to-Peer Communications in OFDMA Cellular Networks

Abstract: This paper proposes a unique discovery signal as an enabler of peer-to-peer (P2P) communication which overlays a cellular network and shares its resources. Applying P2P communication to cellular network has two key issues: 1. Conventional ad hoc P2P connections may be unstable since stringent resource and interference coordination is usually difficult to achieve for ad hoc P2P communications; 2. The large overhead required by P2P communication may offset its gain. We solve these two issues by using a special discovery signal to aid cellular network-supervised resource sharing and interference management between cellular and P2P connections. The discovery signal, which facilitates efficient neighbor discovery in a cellular system, consists of un-modulated tones transmitted on a sequence of OFDM symbols. This discovery signal not only possesses the properties of high power efficiency, high interference tolerance, and freedom from near-far effects, but also has minimal overhead. A practical discovery-signal-based P2P in an OFDMA cellular system is also proposed. Numerical results are presented which show the potential of improving local service and edge device performance in a cellular network.