A Review of Nature-Inspired Routing Algorithms for Flying Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

This paper presents an emerging scope of nature-inspired algorithms for routing in the field of flying ad hoc networks. Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) have become a major communication network for various unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). With the recent attention in the usage of UAVs, the designing and development of routing protocols have become an efficient part in connecting and organizing the flying ad hoc network. FANET has different characteristics when compared to other ad hoc networks, such as high node density, changing topology, and high energy consumption, so they require much more reliable communication protocol. Therefore, connecting many UAVs is a big challenge in FANET and till now no such efficient algorithm has been made. In order to overcome this challenge, nature-inspired algorithms (NIA) have been proposed as a solution to improve the routing and connectivity problem of FANET. NIA computes on the behavior of biological agents and uses this paradigm for solving and building various advance algorithms. This paper describes the literature work done till now on routing algorithms used for FANETs and explains how NIA has been proved as an efficient algorithm for routing in FANETs.