Communications device, infrastructure equipment, and methods

Circuitry for an infrastructure equipment forming part of a mobile communications network, the circuitry comprising

• transmitter circuitry configured to transmit signals to one or more communications devices via a wireless access interface within a radio coverage area of the infrastructure equipment,
• receiver circuitry configured to receive signals from the one or more communications devices via the wireless access interface within the radio coverage area of the infrastructure equipment, and
• controller circuitry for controlling the transmitter circuitry and the receiver circuitry to transmit or to receive the signals via the wireless access interface to transmit or to receive data represented by the signals, and the controller circuitry is configured to with the transmitter circuitry and the receiver circuitry
• to receive an indication, from each of one or more in-coverage communications devices of a measured signal strength signal of one or more signals transmitted by an out-of-coverage communications device and received by the in-coverage communications devices, wherein the signals transmitted by the out-of-coverage communications device having been transmitted via predetermined communications resources of the wireless access interface according to a device-to-device communications protocol, the out-of-coverage communications device and the one or more in-coverage communications device forming a group of communications devices which communicate using the device-to-device communications protocol, and
• based upon the indication of the received signal strength received from each of the one or more in-coverage communications devices, the controller circuitry is configured to select one of the in-coverage communications devices to act as a relay node for the out-of-coverage communications device in accordance with predetermined conditions.