D2D- and DTN-Based Efficient Data Offloading Techniques for 5G Networks

With the advancement of smart phone technologies cellular communication has come to a stage where user bandwidth has surpassed the available bandwidth. In addition, the well-organized but stubborn architecture of cellular networks sometimes creates hindrance to the optimal usage of the network resources. Due to this, a User Equipment (UE) experiencing a poor channel to the Base Station (BTS) or evolved NodeB (eNB) or any other Access Point (AP) retransmits the data. In such scenarios, Device-to-Device (D2D) communication and offload/relay underlying the cellular networks or the access networks provides a unique solution where the affected UE can find a close proximity offloader UE to relay its data to eNB. Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN) is another framework which has potential usage in low-connectivity zones like cell edge and/or remote locations in cellular networks. This chapter investigates various possibilities where D2D and DTN can be jointly used to improve teledensity as well delayed but guaranteed services to poor or no connectivity areas.