An Adaptive Virtual Tunnel Routing Protocol With Eliminating Boundary Effects for Flying Ad-Hoc Networks

Flying Ad-Hoc networks (FANETs) composed of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer innovative solutions in various fields. However, their dynamic nature and sparse topology pose significant challenges for connectivity and routing efficiency. To address these issues, we propose the adaptive virtual tunnel routing protocol (AVTR) with eliminating boundary effects for FANETs. AVTR is a location-based, on-demand protocol that introduces a hop-by-hop virtual relay tunnel (HH-VRT) to confine forwarding within a limited set of UAVs. This approach reduces unnecessary transmissions and overhead. Additionally, AVTR incorporates a novel eliminating boundary effect factor $(Q)$ to minimize path deviation and a new link quality factor $(LQ)$ to evaluate link stability. By considering residual energy, LQ, and hop count, AVTR optimally selects the next forwarding node, enhancing routing efficiency and connectivity. Simulation results demonstrate that AVTR outperforms existing EARVRT, Pipe, IHCR, IoDMix routing protocols across seven critical metrics, including end-to-end delay and routing overhead, validating its effectiveness in improving FANET performance.