Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): Evaluation of OLSR, DSDV, AODV, and DSR Dynamic Routing Protocols

Flying Ad hoc Networks (Flying ad hoc networks) made up of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are now widely used in civilian and non-civilian applications. In FANET, communication among UAVs needs to be properly coordinated through the exchange of messages among them. This leads to the requirement of a proper routing protocol for such UAV Networks or FANET. Because of the high mobility of such networks developing suitable routing protocols is very challenging. In this manuscript, the existing routing protocols are examined through extensive simulation for their suitability for usage in such a complex environment. The Packet receiving rate of different routing protocols such as Ad-Hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV), Destination Sequenced distance vector (DSDV), Optimized link state routing (OLSR), and dynamic source routing (DSR) is recorded by varying node density and speed of nodes. Simulation is done by using Network Simulator3 simulations. It was found that among these protocols AODV is outperforming all other protocols for such scenarios.