Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Opportunistic Networks

The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used in many application areas including the opportunistic networks. In this paper, we investigate the efficient usage of UAVs in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle aided Opportunistic Networks (UAON). The UAVs act as message distributors whereas the nodes on the ground generate the messages. The simulation study is conducted on the real-world dataset of nodes moving around North Carolina State University. We have tested different cruising techniques and the cases without the usage of UAV. The simulations showed improved results in terms of message delay and success rate when the UAVs were used in an opportunistic network settings.