Scalability analysis of Flying Ad Hoc Networks (FANETs): A directional antenna approach

Abstract

Flying Ad Hoc Network (FANET) is a novel mobile ad hoc network type where the communicating nodes are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Deployment of traditional omnidirectional antennas on FANETs lacks to address enhanced spatial reuse demands because interference by simultaneous transmissions limits the maximum number of concurrent communications. Alternatively, utilization of directional antennas can significantly increase the spatial reuse and network capacity of FANETs. In this paper, we present an analytical study to specify the maximum number of active UAV node pairs for three dimensional (3D) flight scenarios. Specifically, we propose an analysis for various flight scenarios over different types of flights and present the effects of the distance between communicating nodes and the main beam angles on the number of maximum active node pairs.

LODMAC: Location Oriented Directional MAC protocol for FANETs

“…In [3], Temel et al present a capacity analysis of FANETs when deploying directional antennas. They state that, side lobe antenna gains, antenna main beam angle value and relative velocity of UAVs have significant effects on the number of maximum concurrent active nodes and achievable maximum data transfer rate.…”

“…The main intension to utilize two transceivers and separating control and data channels is to increase the overall network capacity and mitigate the average network delay of the FANET [2,3,[11][12][13]. The first transceiver, T1 is responsible for location dissemination and exchange of control packets.…”

“…Directional antennas have several advantages over omnidirectional ones which enable them to be a promising alternative to be deployed in FANETs [1][2][3]. One of the prominent advantages is that the transmission range of a directional antenna is generally longer and spatial reuse of the network increases with deployment of directional antenna based protocols [2][3][4][5].…”

“…However, when used for FANETs, many problems arise. Such examples vary from longer packet transmission delays to degraded security and limited transmission ranges [2,3]. In some scenarios, such as a search and rescue mission after a catastrophic event, the application demands may be delay-untolerated where human life is in concern.…”

“…One of the prominent advantages is that the transmission range of a directional antenna is generally longer and spatial reuse of the network increases with deployment of directional antenna based protocols [2][3][4][5]. However, utilization of directional antennas necessitates the usage of directional MAC protocols which mostly suffer from the well-known deafness and head-of-line blocking problems [4].…”