Design and Implementation of a Relay Mechanism in Restricted UAVs Ad-hoc Networks
Tian Dai, Aijing Li, Hai Wang · 2019
In extreme environment, frequent changes in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) networks topology will lead to irregular network partition due to node mobility, energy constraints and accidental damage. The performance of Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) routing protocols are greatly limited. Delay/Disruption Tolerant Network (DTN) random routing protocol for interrupted networks will cause unnecessary overhead in well-connected network and it is impossible to establish transmission connections for completely disconnected nodes. Therefore, it is necessary to use non-random mobile UAVs as relays to transmit data. For the relay UAV, we design a relay mechanism based on Software Defined Network (SDN) architecture, which can switch to MANET mode according to the network environment changes while guaranteeing the carrier transmission of the relay UAV, so as to reduce the flight delay. In addition, we verify the validity of the relay mechanism through simulation experiments, and realize the mechanism by using physical objects. The experimental results show the average transmission delay of UAV is reduced by 29.5% compared with the original scheme.