Topology control flying backhaul networks

With the dissemination of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm, a rapidly increasing number of devices are connecting to the Internet, namely smartphones, tablets and wearable devices (e.g., smartwatches). Moreover, popularization of distributed systems and high-quality multimedia streaming services, along with the migration of data and services to the cloud, are contributing to an increase of the Internet traffic generated by these always-on devices. In order to provide a good Quality of Experience (QoE) to the user, these devices demand broadband Internet connections. As a result, during large public temporary crowded events (examples being music festivals, public demonstrations and sports events) users face problems accessing the Internet, whether they are using cellular networks or Wi-Fi Access Points (APs) installed on site. Solutions have been developed recently to overcome the cellular saturation problem. However, despite these efforts, cellular networks remain unable to handle the large amounts of data generated by user devices and, consequently, unable to provide the desired QoE demanded by the users. Current Wi-Fi based solutions, on the other hand, provide the desired broadband at the expense of a high deployment cost and inefficiency throughout large periods of time, due to a static planning prior to the event, which render these solutions inadequate for public temporary crowded events. In fact, given that these events are extremely popular and frequent, the development of new solutions presents increased benefits to the users attending the events, reflected in the QoE provided. Moreover, the proposed solution can also be applied to slightly different scenarios, contributing to solve similar problems. In this sense, in order to address this problem, the concept of a traffic-aware Flying Backhaul Network (FBN), based on Flying Ad Hoc Networks (FANETs), was introduced and explored in the scope of this Dissertation. The main objective of the work was to design a traffic-aware FBN that provides broadband Internet access to the users attending the public temporary crowded event, presenting multiple benefits relative to existing solutions, such as the ability to dynamically self-configure according to the users’ needs, thus providing them with the best possible QoE. To validate the developed solution, Matlab simulations were also developed which provided a graphical representation of the behavior of the algorithm, in response to different scenarios, common in these types of events. Moreover, a testbed capable of validating the developed solution on a real scenario and evaluate its performance was also designed. The results obtained show that the concept developed in this Dissertation presents multiple benefits relative to the existing solutions, introducing the new traffic-aware FBN concept and the correspondent topology control algorithm, particularly adequate for public temporary crowded events.