Simulation-Based Performance Evaluation of Mobile Ad Hoc Routing Protocols in a Swarm of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper evaluates the performance of several ad hoc routing protocols in the context of a swarm of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It has been proposed that a wireless network where nodes have on average 5.1774 log n neighbors, where n is the total number of network nodes, has a high probability of having no partitions. By decreasing transmission range and implementing multi-hop routing between nodes, while ensuring network connectivity is maintained, spatial multiplexing of the wireless channel is exploited. The proposed process is evaluated using the OPNET network simulation tool for the Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR), Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR), and Ad hoc On- demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocols in the context of a swarm of UAVs.