Method and apparatus for opportunistic scheduling of peer-to-peer links in a wide area network

摘要

A method, a computer program product, and an apparatus are provided. The apparatus determines an availability of a wireless wide area network (WWAN) subframe, and utilizes the WWAN subframe for peer-to-peer communication when the WWAN subframe is available. Accordingly, peer mobile terminals or devices may establish direct peer-to-peer links for communicating small amounts of information without affecting the quality of existing WWAN communications. In the wireless wide area network (WWAN) scenario, communication between mobile terminals is facilitated through uplink/downlink channels between the mobile terminals and a base station (i.e., WWAN link). Therefore, for various types of applications, an efficient means of communicating a small amount of information frequently is provided that does not require large amounts of signaling overhead.