Dynamic Routing in Flying Ad-Hoc Networks Using Topology-Based Routing Protocols

The ever-increasing demand for flexible and portable communications has led to a rapid evolution in networking between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) often referred to as flying ad-hoc networks (FANETs). However, due to the exclusive characteristics of UAVs such as high mobility, frequent topology change and 3D space movement, make routing a challenging task in FANETs. Due to these characteristics, designing new routing protocols for FANETs is quite difficult. In the literature study of FANETs, a variety of traditional ad-hoc networking protocols have been suggested and tested for FANETs to establish an efficient and robust communication among the UAVs. In this context, topology-based routing is considered the most significant approach for solving the routing issues in FANETs. Therefore, in this article we specifically focus on topology-based routing protocols with the aim of improving the efficiency of the network in terms of throughput, end-to-end delay, and network load. We present a brief review of the most important topology-based routing protocols in the context of FANETs. We provide them with their working features for exchanging information, along with the pros and cons of each protocol. Moreover, simulation analyses of some of the topology-based routing protocols are also evaluated in terms of end-to-end delay, throughput and network load the using optimized network engineering tools (OPNET) simulator. Furthermore, this work can be used as a source of reference for researchers and network engineers who seek literature that is relevant to routing in FANETs.