Topology management algorithms for large-scale aerial high capacity directional networks

The U.S. Department of Defense with the Joint Aerial Layer Network (JALN) concept as well as public companies like Google with their Loon project and Facebook with their solar-powered UAV concept have all invested significant funds to develop and deploy airborne high capacity backbone systems. These systems are intended to augment ground networks in support of disaster relief, to extend Internet access to infrastructure-less areas, and to support other similar missions. They can be used to replace existing satellite backbones which typically offer low capacity and high latency connections. One of the key challenges to building an airborne backbone network is large-scale topology management of directional links in a dynamic environment. In this paper, we present several topology management algorithms for large scale airborne networks and evaluate the performance of these algorithms under various scenarios. In each case, we seek to evaluate link and path availability of each algorithm.