Networking Models in Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs): Concepts and Challenges

Abstract

In recent years, the capabilities and roles of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have rapidly evolved, and their usage in military and civilian areas is extremely popular as a result of the advances in technology of robotic systems such as processors, sensors, communications, and networking technologies. While this technology is progressing, development and maintenance costs of UAVs are decreasing relatively. The focus is changing from use of one large UAV to use of multiple UAVs, which are integrated into teams that can coordinate to achieve high-level goals. This level of coordination requires new networking models that can be set up on highly mobile nodes such as UAVs in the fleet. Such networking models allow any two nodes to communicate directly if they are in the communication range, or indirectly through a number of relay nodes such as UAVs. Setting up an ad-hoc network between flying UAVs is a challenging issue, and requirements can differ from traditional networks, Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) and Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) in terms of node mobility, connectivity, message routing, service quality, application areas, etc. This paper identifies the challenges with using UAVs as relay nodes in an ad-hoc manner, introduces network models of UAVs, and depicts open research issues with analyzing opportunities and future work.