SDN-based Connectivity Restoration for Partitioned Flying Ad hoc Networks

Due to possible failure of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a connected flying ad hoc network (FANET) may be divided into multiple sub-networks. In this case, the FANET connectivity should be restored in a short time and at a low cost. In this paper, we investigate the FANET connectivity restoration when a FANET is split. Firstly, in order to restore the FANET connectivity in a centralized manner, we propose a software-defined networking (SDN)-based FANET architecture. The process of FANET connectivity restoration is designed based on this architecture. Secondly, we propose a UAV scheduling algorithm based on greedy idea to calculate the position to which each mission UAV needs to move, so that the FANET connectivity can be restored through mission UAV movement. This algorithm should be invoked by the SDN controller. Numerical results show that our approach can restore the FANET connectivity with a lower total movement distance and a lower maximum movement distance than three other baselines.