LODMAC: Location Oriented Directional MAC protocol for FANETs

Abstract

Flying Ad Hoc Network (FANET) is a novel mobile ad hoc network type where the communicating nodes are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). FANETs promise many new ways for both civilian and military applications. Today, traditional omnidirectional antennas are deployed on UAV nodes which result in reduced spatial reuse and limited network capacity. Alternatively, deployment of directional antennas can significantly increase the capacity, spatial reuse and communication range of FANETs. In addition, being aware of the exact locations of the neighboring nodes in a FANET is vital especially for directional ad hoc multi-UAV scenarios. In this paper, we present a novel MAC protocol, LODMAC (Location Oriented Directional MAC), which incorporates the utilization of directional antennas and location estimation of the neighboring nodes within the MAC layer. By defining a new Busy to Send (BTS) packet along with the Request to Send (RTS) and Clear to Send (CTS) packets, LODMAC effectively addresses the well known directional deafness problem. In terms of throughput, utilization, average network delay and fairness, LODMAC protocol outperforms the well-known DMAC (Directional MAC) protocol which puts LODMAC to be a robust mile-stone for the on-coming FANET MAC protocols.