U2RV: UAV‐assisted reactive routing protocol for VANETs

Abstract

When it comes to keeping the data routing robust and effective in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), stable and durable connectivity constitutes the keystone to ensure successful point-to-point communication. Since VANETs can comprise all kinds of mobile vehicles moving and changing direction frequently, this may result in frequent link failures and network partitions. Moreover, when VANETs are deployed in a city environment, another problem arises, that is, the existing obstructions (eg, buildings, trees, and hoppers) preventing the line-of-sight between vehicles, thus degrading wireless transmissions. Therefore, it is more complicated to design a routing technique that adapts to frequent changes in the topology. In order to settle all these problems, in this work, we design a flooding scheme that automatically reacts at each topology variation while overcoming the present obstacles while exchanging data in ad hoc mode with drones that are commonly called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Also, the aim of this work is to explore well-regulated routing paths providing a long lifetime connectivity based on the amount of traffic and the expiration time of each discovered path. A set of experiments is carried out using a simulation, and the outcomes are confronted with similar protocols based on a couple of metrics.The results clearly show that the assistance of UAVs to vehicles is capable of providing high delivery ratios and low delivery delays while efficiently extending the network connectivity.

Softwarization of UAV Networks: A Survey of Applications and Future Trends

“…UAVs can assist the wireless communications between two or more remote wireless devices without direct communication links [82]. Several works in the literature, such as in [83]- [86] only consider the mobility of UAVs on a fixed or random trajectory. However, as we all know, UAVs can flexibly move in the 3D space to achieve better performance and effectively perform tasks.…”

“…During the last decade, the assistance of terrestrial networks by UAVs has attracted increased attention [86]. The use of UAVs has presented a flexible capability to assist terrestrial networks when they suffer from poor connectivity [181].…”

Q-LBR: Q-Learning Based Load Balancing Routing for UAV-Assisted VANET

“…As a drawback, LCAD does not consider the traffic characteristics of a URN bottleneck. UAV-assisted VANET routing (UVAR) [ 4 ] and its extension (U2RV, UAV-assisted reactive routing protocol for VANETs) [ 5 ] utilize reactive multipath routing for UAV-assisted routing. UVAR and U2RV are based on four main processes: discovery, selection, data delivery and maintenance.…”

“…Several methods have recently been developed in the literature for UAV-assisted network protocols that address the issues of high mobility in the network and unpredictable change in topology of the mobile nodes [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. Unlike a fixed ground relay station, a UAV relay node (URN) moves along with the ground vehicular nodes (GVNs) to support a reliable network through a continuous line-of-sight (LoS) link.…”

Time-Dependent Ad-Hoc Routing Structure for Delivering Delay-Sensitive Data Using UAVs

“…In catastrophic disaster situations, where the timely data delivery should be reliable and stable, UAVs can contribute to relaying packets while constructing a flying ad-hoc network themselves [2], [3]. Moreover, UAVs can assist the existing ground networks as a substitute network on top of sparsely connected networks [4], [5]. Depending on the urgency degree and the location of the data to be delivered by a UAV, it can change its own navigation priority to maximize the percentage of successful data delivery given each distinct time constraint, across a certain region of interest (RoI).…”