A distributed scheduler for airborne backbone networks with directional antennas

Airborne backbone networks are useful in tactical applications to interconnect sub-networks. A major challenge in such networks, normally comprising large numbers of highly mobile nodes, is the design of the medium access control (MAC) and routing protocols. We propose integration of MAC and routing functions, which use the attributes of a clustering scheme that addresses scalability. The reactive routing protocol to establish connectivity between two distant nodes uses the proactive routes within the cluster to address the high dynamics in airborne networks. We present the performance of the proposed solution in terms of success rate, overhead and latency in packet and file delivery.