Intelligent wireless ad hoc routing protocol and controller for UAV networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel UAV to UAV communication approach that is based on the concept of Software Defined Networking (SDN). The proposed approach uses a controller as a central source of information to assign routes that maximize throughput, distribute traffic evenly, reduce network delay and utilize all network elements. Simulation results of the proposed methodology were compared to the performance of two common ad hoc routing protocols, namely AODV and OLSR. Performance analysis shows that the proposed methodology improves throughput by over 300%. Simulation results also show a reduction in network delay for delay sensitive packets by nearly 25% and a 26 times increase in packet delivery ratio for packets with higher priority.