Optimization of End-to-End Throughput on Piggyback Network with drone-to-drone millimeter-wave communications

A store-carry-forward network, incorporating high-speed wireless links and autonomous mobility, such as drones, enables significantly faster data transfer compared to conventional wide-area wireless networks. It has been referred to as a Piggyback Network and proposed as a key technology for Beyond 5G. Recent experiments have successfully demonstrated drone-to-drone direct communication using millimeter waves. This paper proposes an optimization method designed to maximize the throughput of the Piggyback network, which includes multiple data source nodes, destination nodes, and multiple drones equipped with millimeter communication links. We assume that high-speed communications among drones utilizing millimeter waves are available. We optimize the assignment of each transmitted data to drones, the paths of moving drones, and the routing of each data among multiple drones to minimize end-to-end data transfer time. Our simulation results indicate that introducing drone-to-drone millimeter-wave communication leads to faster data transport compared to the conventional Piggyback network.