Clustering-Based Energy Efficient Routing for Flying Ad Hoc Networks

Forest fires pose a serious risk to the stability of the ecological system. Due to the effective usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a variety of military and rescue applications, flying ad-hoc networks (FANETs) have offered a wide field for research and deployment. UAVs are extremely mobile in a three-dimensional (3D) environment and have limited battery power, which leads to several issues such as short travel distances and unreliable routing. These issues can be helped by the energy-efficient routing. In this research work, we have proposed an improved Sparrow Search algorithm-based clustering and energy-efficient routing scheme (SSA-CEER) for energy-efficient FANETs by adhering to network resource constraints. A method for selecting the Cluster Head (CH) is proposed, employing a weighted sum-based function. The chosen parameters for this selection process include the residual energy of UAVs, their distance to the Base Station (BS), relative mobility, and degree difference. The next forwarder-hop route is chosen using as link lifetime and the future direction of one-hop neighbors, which ensures reliable data transfer to the BS. The routing strategy at the core of this approach is position-based greedy routing. The proposed method is examined using the network simulator NS-3.25. The results of our experiments demonstrate notable improvements in terms of packet delivery, delay, and routing overhead.