Performance analysis of mesh routing protocols for UAV swarming applications

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are an emerging technology offering new opportunities for innovative applications and efficient overall process management in the areas of public security, cellular networks and surveying. A key factor for the optimizations yielded by this technology is an advanced mesh network design for fast and reliable information sharing between UAVs. In this paper, we analyze the performance of four available mesh routing protocol implementations (open80211s, BATMAN, BATMAN Advanced and OLSR) in the context of swarming applications for UAVs. The protocols are analyzed by means of goodput in one static and one mobile scenario using the same embedded hardware platform installed at UAVs in current research projects. Our results show that layer-2 protocols suit better for mobile applications in comparison to layer-3. On the other hand, they often cause routing flippings, which are unwanted route changes, in static scenarios imposing a small performance decrease. Hence, given the aforementioned routing protocols, we recommend to currently use open80211s or batman-advanced to establish a reliable multi-hop mesh network for swarming applications.