A comparative study of mobility models for flying ad hoc networks

Abstract

Flying ad hoc network (FANET) consists of cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that form an ad hoc network to accomplish an assigned task. The mobility of the UAVs plays a dominant role as the performance of FANETs is directly connected to the mobility of UAVs. To this end, this paper presents an extensive review of mobility management models of FANETs. There is limited work presented in previous survey as most of the survey papers are more focused on routing protocols. The novelty of this work is that we perform taxonomy and comparative analysis of various mobility models of FANETs. The comparison study of all FANET mobility models has been performed based on various network characteristics. Later, we also discuss the strengths, and weaknesses, of each mobility model. Furthermore, open issues, challenges, and some future directions for research in the field of FANETs have been discussed which shall be useful for further research.