A Software Defined Networking-based Routing Algorithm for Flying Ad Hoc Networks

Flying Ad-Hoc Networks are wireless ad-hoc networks that unmanned aerial vehicles are used as communication nodes in environments where it is difficult to establish a proper communication infrastructure. FANET systems have high dynamism levels because the nodes move at very high speeds and UAVs can have various mobility models to use. The fact that the devices are aerial vehicles ensures that they have a line of sight between them, and it requires FANET systems operating on large topologies with low node density. For these reasons, the structure of the topology changes rapidly, and the frequency of link disconnections between UAVs increases. Topology-based and position-based traditional routing algorithms do not work well in the face of this problem. Therefore, SDN Based Routing Protocol which can work on both proactive and reactive manner has been developed in order to improve the communication performance of highly dynamic FANET systems. Software Defined Networking technology is used as network management architecture, and the Openflow protocol is used to establish communication between UAVs in the data layer and control layer. To optimize Openflow packets for FANETs, protocol adaption studies are carried out. To make the system more manageable for different dynamism levels, topology control services, timer control services, and node configuration services for SDN controller units are designed. Non delay-tolerant position-based protocols and topology-based reactive and proactive protocols are studied and compared with the protocol designed based on SDN architecture in terms of throughput, end-to-end delay, and control packet overhead parameters. In the comparison studies performed by creating scenarios where the topology has different levels of dynamism, it has been revealed that SDN Based Routing Protocol performs better than traditional protocols.