Routing in UAVs-assisted 5G Wireless Sensor Network: Recent Advancements, Challenges, Research GAps, and Future Directions

The emergence of Fifth Generation (5G) technology has led to the ever rising demands of higher data rate, massive connectivity, reliability and least possible delay of less than 1 millisecond. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)-assisted 5G Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) have been leaving an everlasting impact on performing data dissemination in remote areas with least possible delay while ensuring the reliable communication. However, one paramount concern is the resource-constrained operations of UAVs which limits its horizon of applications. WSN has brought a sensing revolution with tiny-sized and low-cost sensors performing the task of data collection, however, the presence of obstacles among the receiving and transmitting nodes, acts as a bottleneck in faithful data dissemination. To address this issue, UAV-assisted 5G WSN has made it feasible to operate in such unconventional circumstances, further, the technological advancements in routing strategies have also favored longer operational duration of UAVs. In this paper, we have given a deep insight to various cluster-based routing strategies meant for UAV-assisted WSN by highlighting the research gaps and also the future direction.