TPF-MAC: Traffic Prediction based MAC Protocol for FANETs

With the iterative update of communication technology, Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) has become the focus of social research, while the Media Access Control (MAC) protocol is undoubtedly one of the core technologies of the future development of FANETs. However, rapid change of network environment is a challenge to support different QoS for MAC protocol of FANETs. In this paper, we propose a FANETs MAC protocol based on traffic prediction called TPF-MAC, which combines the advantages of saving channel resources and meeting the needs of safe transmission while providing different QoS guarantees. TPF-MAC incorporates two techniques. First, we optimize the number of empty slots for newly-joint UAVs based on mobility prediction, which reduces the chance of losing safety packets. Second, we propose a frame adjustment mechanism based on traffic prediction, which gives priority to guarantee the bandwidth of service packets on the basis of guaranteeing safety packets. Simulation results show that compared with previous representative protocols, the safety packets of TPF-MAC achieve low delay and higher packet receiving rate, and the throughput of service packet is significantly improved.