Device-to-device (D2D) contention management systems and methods provide managed offloading of cellular network traffic through a contention-based network. For each link in a group of links between nodes in the contention-based network, a link cost is calculated to determine a number of potential links that may interfere with the link, if activated. Each link is evaluated in the order of ascending link cost to determine whether it complies with predefined conditions and whether activating the link increases or decreases D2D network throughput. If the link increases throughput, the link is activated.