ARAT: An Altitude-Based Routing Protocol for Hybrid Aerial-Terrestrial Networks

Shortly, the airspace will have different types of aerial networks due to the continuous growth of demands for aerial applications. As these networks compete for airspace, it is necessary to manage them efficiently. Also, these networks are expected to communicate with each other and with terrestrial networks forming hybrid aerial-terrestrial networks (HATNs). Efficient protocols for data packet delivery in HATNs are crucial for these networks to work together. In addition, cooperation between networks can be essential for different emergencies. However, communication in HATNs is challenging because of the plurality of node types. This work presents an altitude-based routing protocol for Hybrid Aerial-terrestrial Networks (ARAT). ARAT is a geocast and store-carry-forward protocol with promising performance in sparse scenarios. Simulation results show that ARAT outperforms two protocols (a baseline protocol and the GeoUAV protocol) by 50% for the packet delivery ratio metric. Also, to the best of our knowledge, ARAT is the first protocol to consider a collaboration between Aerial Networks and Internet of Drones (IoD) with the traffic of drones constantly.