Analysis of the packet path lengths in the swarms for flying ubiquitous sensor networks

Abstract

The article gives an approach for estimating the packet path length between the nodes for Flying Ubiquitous Sensor Networks. Authors show that such networks may be represented as three-dimensional swarms of nodes. The mathematical models for the ball and cubic swarms are given, as well as the simulation approach for the other shapes. Also two types of network architecture are considered – direct transfer and multi-hop. Simulation shows that the shape of the swarm significantly impact on the average packet path length both for direct and multi-hop data transfer cases: more centralized shapes (e.g. ball) give better results (smaller path length) than less centralized (e.g. cube), and this difference becomes more significant in the multi-hop mode. Number of hops for multi-hop mode also shows the same dependency.