Satisfactory video dissemination on FANETs based on an enhanced UAV relay placement service

Abstract

The user experience on watching videos transmitted by a flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) should always be satisfactory even under influence of topology changes in reason of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) mobility. However, one of the main challenges to route packets in FANETs is how to mitigate the effects of UAV mobility to preclude communication flaws, delays, and void area, which hence increase the packet loss over video transmissions. In this way, routing protocols require an efficient relay placement service to find out the ideal location for UAVs that act as relay nodes, and thus mitigating the effects of UAV movements on the quality of experience (QoE) of transmitted videos. In this article, we introduce a massive analysis of our proposed relay placement mechanism, called MobiFANET, in order to diagnose the impact of videos with different characteristics on the QoE and route failure. We also present detailed information about the MobiFANET mechanism, as well as the contributions of each component on the routing performance. Simulation results show how MobiFANET works jointly with a routing protocol for satisfactory multimedia transmission, where it provides better QoE and a reduction of the number of route failures compared to existing routing protocols.