A Software Defined Networking-based Routing Algorithm for Flying Ad Hoc Networks

Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANET) are wireless mobile ad-hoc networks composed of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) as communicating nodes. As with any computer network, routing is an essential problem that has to be solved efficiently for high performance. FANETs present unique challenges with respect to routing, due to their structures. FANET systems have high dynamicity as the nodes move at very high speeds and UAVs can behave in accordance with various mobility models. The nodes usually have line of sight between them, but FANET systems frequently operate on large topologies with low node density. Hence, the structure of the topology changes rapidly, and the frequency of link disconnections between UAVs increases. Traditional topology-based and position-based routing algorithms do not work well in the face of this problem. In this study, we propose a novel SDN-based Routing Protocol which comprises both proactive and reactive components in order to improve the performance. Software Defined Networking technology is used as the network management architecture. To investigate the performance of the proposed protocol against legacy MANET routing protocols, a comparison study was conducted in terms of throughput, end-to-end delay, and control packet overhead. Simulation results show that the proposed SDN-based Routing Protocol performs better than the selected legacy protocols.