A survey study on MAC and routing protocols to facilitate energy efficient and effective UAV-based communication systems

Abstract Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-based communication systems have good potential to support various domains from military applications to public safety networks. UAVs are particularly useful for applications where the absence of communications may cause high risks placing human lives in danger. At the same time, in order to handle relatively large regions, multi-UAV systems with effective collaboration, which support mission completions in efficient and economical ways, are required. Additionally, especially for mission critical applications, the context-specific network should be stable and reliable. For the use of UAVs in most effective way, there are still a variety of aspects, which require contributions from researchers. Since UAV networks come with unique characteristics such as rapidly changing topologies, varying levels of dynamism from slow dynamic to dynamic, and fragile links, existing studies on Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), and Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are not able to fulfill their requirements. Indeed, the protocols to be developed should be able to adapt to high mobility, dynamic topology, varying power constraints, and various levels of link qualities. Evaluation of these protocols from various perspectives is therefore very critical. The protocols considered in various levels should be able to support features such as energy efficiency, high connectivity, delay sensitiveness, high reliability, and security. In this study, the existing MAC and routing protocols are considered critically together with their characteristics, which may be critical for performance in terms of quality of service and energy efficiency.