Patent ID: 9654443
Date: 2017-05-16
CPC Classifications: H04L,H04W

Claim:
1. A method by a cellular radio network node configured to provide cellular radio services in a cellular radio network and to provide assistance for device-to-device communications between wireless devices served by the cellular radio network, comprising: receiving, via the cellular radio network, from a first wireless communication device configured to perform device-to-device communication, one or more first global device identities associated with the first wireless communication device; allocating one or more first local device identities to the first wireless communication device, from a set of local device identities associated with a coverage area of the cellular radio network corresponding to a current location of the first wireless communication device, said allocating based on the number of wireless communication devices within the coverage area that are active with respect to device-to-device communications, or at least capable of device-to-device communications; storing, in association with the cellular radio network node, a mapping between each of the received one or more first global device identities and each of the allocated one or more first local device identities; transmitting information indicative of the allocated one or more first local device identities to the first wireless communication device, via the cellular radio network; and transmitting information indicative of at least one of the allocated one or more first local device identities, via the cellular radio network, to a first group of one or more other wireless communication devices configured to perform device-to-device communication, wherein the first group of one or more other wireless communication devices is a subset of all device-to-device communication capable devices registered to the cellular radio network node; wherein given wireless communication devices that are allocated given local device identities from the set of local device identities use the allocated local device identities to generate beacon signals for device-to-device communications, and wherein the set of local device identities is designed to minimize a mutual cross correlation or maximize a signal distance between such beacon signals.