Copy Adaptive Routing Algorithm Based on Network Connectivity in Flying Ad Hoc Networks

The Flying Ad Hoc Network (FANET) is a kind of mobile network which is composed of flying UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) as network nodes. With the high node mobility and dynamic topology, data transmission in FANETs is faced with severe challenges, such as unstable communication links and limited resources in the network. Due to the uncertainty of node encounters, data transmission is usually carried out by opportunistic transmission. However, the opportunistic delivery of data using multicopy routing not only consumes a large amount of network resources but also causes too much transmission overhead and low delivery quality. Thus, this paper designs a connectivity-based copy adaptive transmit routing algorithm (CCAT). Considering the network interruptions caused by high-speed node movement, CCAT makes packet forwarding decisions by estimating network connectivity and uses node transmit prediction value as forwarding utility value to control the number of copies of packets. Simulation results show that the delivery rate of CCAT can be improved by about 30% at the peak compared with traditional multicopy routing strategies and the transmission latency of CCAT is minimal.