Delay Tolerant Packet Forwarding Algorithm Based on Location Estimation for Micro Aerial Vehicle Networks

Abstract

In search and rescue mission, micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) are typically used to capture image and video from an aerial perspective and transfer the data to the ground station. Because of the power limitation, a cluster of MAVs are required for a large search area, hence an ad-hoc wireless network must be maintained to transfer data more conveniently and fast. However, the unstable link and the intermittent connectivity between the MAVs caused by MAVs’ movement may challenge the packet forwarding. This paper proposes a delay tolerant packet forwarding algorithm based on location estimation for MAV networks, called DTNest algorithm. In the algorithm, ferrying MAVs are used to transmit data between MAVs and the ground station, and the locations of both searching MAVs and ferrying MAVs are estimated to compute the distances between the MAVs and destination. The MAV that is closest to the destination is selected greedy to forward packet. If a MAV cannot find the next hop MAV using the greedy strategy, the packets will be stored and re-forwarded once again in the next time slot. The experiment results show that the proposed DTNest algorithm outperforms the typical DTNgeo algorithm in terms of packet delivery ratio and average routing hops.