A Reliability-Aware Adaptive Greedy-Multicast Routing Protocol for 3D Highly Dynamic Networks

Three-dimensional (3D) highly dynamic unmanned aerial vehicle networks (UAVNets) could serve as a pivotal intermediate architecture in air and space integration networks. For UAVNets, efficient routing protocols for data packet delivery are crucial to its wide use. However, communication in UAVs has been a challenging project because of frequent failures at forwarding nodes. In this paper, we propose a localized heuristic solution, called the reliability-aware adaptive greedy-multicast routing (RAGM-3D), to reduce the negative impact of failure on route forwarding. RAGM-3D dynamically adjusts the next-hop forwarding node set which, initially selected by a new multi-factor hybrid greedy strategy, are based on the reliability evaluation to route packets to the destination efficiently. Simulation results show that comprehensive performance of RAGM-3D in terms of packet delivery ratio, delay, and routing overhead outperforms other compared protocols.