Mahmud Imtiaz, Cho You-Ze
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Oct 29;21(21):7192. doi: 10.3390/s21217192.
Energy-efficient routing has become a critical issue for advanced energy-hungry unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Routing in a flying ad hoc network is always challenging and becomes even more critical when a small number of UAVs must cover a large area. The routing protocols based on the delay-tolerant network (DTN) are best suited for such scenarios. However, traditional DTN-based routing protocols depend on data dissemination to offer a better packet delivery ratio, leading to congestion and excess transmissions, causing heavy and unnecessary energy consumption. We propose a location estimation-based congestion-aware routing protocol (LECAR) to balance these two issues. Considering outdated location information, LECAR takes advantage of the mobility model to estimate the current location of the destination. In addition, LECAR routes a packet by considering both the distance to destination and buffer occupancy of the neighboring UAVs. Simulation results show that LECAR could ensure both a high packet delivery ratio and low energy consumption. Moreover, LECAR could provide a minimal number of transmissions, while minimizing the number of copies per packet at a time.
节能路由已成为先进的高能耗无人机（UAV）的关键问题。在移动自组织网络中进行路由总是具有挑战性，当少量无人机必须覆盖大片区域时，这一挑战变得更加严峻。基于延迟容忍网络（DTN）的路由协议最适合此类场景。然而，传统的基于DTN的路由协议依赖于数据传播来提供更好的数据包交付率，这会导致拥塞和过多传输，造成大量不必要的能量消耗。我们提出了一种基于位置估计的拥塞感知路由协议（LECAR）来平衡这两个问题。考虑到过时的位置信息，LECAR利用移动模型来估计目的地的当前位置。此外，LECAR在路由数据包时会同时考虑到与目的地的距离以及相邻无人机的缓冲区占用情况。仿真结果表明，LECAR既能确保高数据包交付率，又能实现低能耗。此外，LECAR可以提供最少的传输次数，同时将每个数据包每次的副本数量降至最低。
