An Energy-efficient Ferry-based Routing Algorithm for Scattered FANET Networks

Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs), have a wide range of applications in both civilian and military settings. Although, prevailing routing protocols are effective in well-connected networks, they struggle in sparse networks. To address this issue in FANETs, a new geographic routing method, utilizing a delay-tolerant routing protocol, is proposed in this paper. The proposed method combines position routing and delay tolerant network (DTN) to minimize routing errors. Here, beacons are transmitted by unmanned aerial vehicles (UA Vs) acting as ferries to inform about their succeeding anchor position to other nodes. The node receiving the beacon determines the closest ferry node and base station to the destination. Using the store-carry and forward approach, each node in the network handles sparse networks. Here, we focused to achieve low latency and have developed a novel communication protocol with two options to emphasize the need for lower latency and routing overhead when delivering data. Data collected by searching UAVs is sent to the base station using the ferry. The proposed model is validated using simulated scenarios, which show improved packet delivery, decreased end-to-end delay, and decreased overhead. The study highlights the importance of using communication methods that have lower latency and routing overhead to deliver data efficiently.