Abstract
Flying ad hoc network (FANET) is a promising and special mobile Ad hoc network, connecting large number of flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on battlefield through wireless link. Designing a multi-priority traffic differentiated medium access control (MAC) protocol with low delay, large capacity, high flexibility, and strong scalability is a great challenge in the researches and applications of FANETs. In order to overcome the disadvantages in IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) and time division multiple access (TDMA) protocols, a novel multi-channel load awareness-based MAC protocol for FANETs is presented in this paper. The multi-priority queueing and service mechanism, and the multi-channel load-based backoff mechanism involved in the protocol are intensively described. We further model the multi-priority queueing and service mechanism by the multi-class queueing theory, and model the backoff mechanism using the Markov chain model. Simulation results show that the protocol can differentiate services for different priorities in FANETs according to real-time channel state, providing effective QoS guarantee for transmissions of various information, and the network bandwidth resource is efficiently utilized.
Highlights
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with the characteristic of low-cost, strong robustness, various applications etc., have become a high-tech with rapid growth and attracted much attention in both military and civil fields
Not relying on prebuilt communication infrastructures, it can transmit multiple kinds of information between UAVs, such as control instruction, situational awareness, and reconnaissance intelligence, etc., through aeronautical wireless channel, forming a multi-hop, self-organized, temporary, and distributed network. Several key technologies, such as dynamic topology control [4] and routing protocol [5,6,7], etc., are used in Flying ad hoc network (FANET) to achieve the interconnection of multiple UAVs
In order to implement tasks efficiently in different applications for multi-UAV system, the medium access control (MAC) protocol used in FANET should meet the following capacity requirements: (1) it can contain large number of nodes, usually hundreds of nodes; (2) it has distributed, centerless and dynamic access capability, and good expansibility; (3) it has high information transmission rate for a large amount of services, such as images, voices, and videos; (4) it can achieve high reliability and low latency of information transmissions, especially for important types of services in network; (5) it can meet the Quality of service (QoS) requirement of multiple services and differentiate multiple traffic types with limited network resource
Summary
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with the characteristic of low-cost, strong robustness, various applications etc., have become a high-tech with rapid growth and attracted much attention in both military and civil fields. In order to implement tasks efficiently in different applications for multi-UAV system, the MAC protocol used in FANET should meet the following capacity requirements: (1) it can contain large number of nodes, usually hundreds of nodes; (2) it has distributed, centerless and dynamic access capability, and good expansibility; (3) it has high information transmission rate for a large amount of services, such as images, voices, and videos; (4) it can achieve high reliability and low latency of information transmissions, especially for important types of services in network; (5) it can meet the QoS requirement of multiple services and differentiate multiple traffic types with limited network resource. Combined with auto regressive (AR) forecasting, the channel occupancy statistical prediction mechanism can accurately predict channel load for the MAC protocol based on channel load awareness
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