Review and comparison of emerging routing protocols in flying ad hoc networks

Abstract

With the development of Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) communication, Flying Ad Hoc Network (FANET) has become a hot research area in recent years, which is widely used in civil and military fields due to its unique advantages. FANET is a special kind of networks which are composed of UAV nodes, and can be used to implement data transfer in certain unique scenarios. To achieve reliable and robust communication among UAVs, a routing algorithm is the key factor and should be designed elaborately. Because of its importance and usefulness, this topic has attracted many researchers, and various routing protocols have also been put forward to improve the quality of data transmission in FANETs. Thus, in this paper, we give a survey on the state-of-the-art of routing protocols proposed in recent years. First, an in-depth research of the routing in FANETs recently has been brought out by absolutely differentiating them based on their routing mechanism. Then, we give a comparative analysis of each protocol based on their characteristics and service quality indicators. Finally, we propose some unsolved problems and future research directions for FANET routing.