Aug 2026· Journal of King Saud University: Computer and Information Sciences· Vol 38· 0 citations· 36 references
TL;DR
Simulation results under varying UAV density, mobility, and traffic load demonstrate that 3D-VRTGR consistently outperforms GPSR, UF-GPSR, and A-Geo and confirm the robustness and efficiency of 3D-VRTGR in highly dynamic FANET environments.
Abstract
Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs), composed of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are a key component of next-generation wireless networks that support various public safety and civilian applications in highly dynamic three-dimensional environments. However, high UAV mobility, highly dynamic topology, and limited energy and processing resources make efficient routing a challenging task. Traditional geographic routing protocols, such as GPSR, suffer from local minima, routing holes, unstable links, and high recovery overhead, reducing their effectiveness in FANETs. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel three-dimensional virtual relay tunnel-based geographic routing (3D-VRTGR) protocol. Unlike existing virtual tunnel-based routing approaches that use tunnels mainly as forwarding constraints, 3D-VRTGR employs a dynamically evolving virtual tunnel that continuously adapts to local network conditions and guides packet forwarding toward favorable regions. Therefore, the tunnel acts as a route-shaping mechanism rather than a simple filtering region. Specifically, the tunnel is reshaped using a distributed attraction-repulsion mechanism based on node density, residual energy, buffer status, geometric progress toward the destination, and void-history information. This mechanism guides the tunnel toward high-quality network regions while avoiding low-quality or potential void areas. Furthermore, a constant-time geometric pruning method provides efficient membership checking, and a bounded local self-repair mechanism addresses rare void-region scenarios without triggering perimeter recovery mode. Simulation results under varying UAV density, mobility, and traffic load demonstrate that 3D-VRTGR consistently outperforms GPSR, UF-GPSR, and A-Geo. The proposed protocol improves packet delivery ratio and throughput by up to 8.4% and 11.76%, respectively, while reducing latency, local minima occurrences, and link failures by up to 11.20%, 15.97%, and 14.54%, respectively. These results confirm the robustness and efficiency of 3D-VRTGR in highly dynamic FANET environments.
Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs), based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), can provide innovative services in dynamic and distributed environments. However, their three-dimensional and highly mobile nature causes unstable links, rapid topology changes, and routing voids, which can degrade the performance of conventional routing protocols. This paper proposes a new proactive axis-guided 3D geographic routing approach (AxisGeo) for FANETs. It is fully distributed, maintains no routing tables, and relies only on one-hop neighbor information. AxisGeo employs two complementary geometric structures– the compressed global axis and the zoomed local axis– to adaptively guide packet forwarding. The global axis provides a fixed source-to-destination direction; whereas the local axis is proactively refined via an attraction-repulsion mechanism, where neighbor-quality information (residual energy, connectivity, progress toward destination, and expected transmission counts (ETX)) is transformed into geometric adaptation forces rather than being used directly to rank next-hop UAVs. Therefore, the proposed mechanism refines the local forwarding geometry itself before node selection. The mechanism relies only on one-hop information and requires no additional control messages beyond periodic beacon exchanges. To address routing voids, AxisGeo employs a NACK-based lightweight self-repair mechanism to reconstruct broken paths. This protocol assumes that UAVs are equipped with positioning systems and periodically exchange beacon messages to maintain one-hop neighbor information. The performance of AxisGeo was evaluated against A-Geo, UF-GPSR, and GPSR under three simulation scenarios involving variations in UAV density, UAV speed, and network traffic. Under varying node density, the packet delivery ratio (PDR) increased from 75% to 96%, end-to-end delay decreased from 190 ms to 78 ms, and throughput improved from 38.6 kbps to 52.1 kbps, corresponding to average performance improvements of 4.41%, 12.10%, and 6.77% over the strongest benchmark (A-Geo), respectively. When varying UAV speed, PDR changed from 94% to 78%, delay increased from 104 ms to 138 ms, and throughput decreased from 48.6 kbps to 39.2 kbps, with corresponding average improvements of 3.53%, 1.53%, and 2.27% over the best baseline (A-Geo). Under varying network traffic, PDR changed from 97% to 87%, delay varies from 99 ms to 147 ms, and throughput increased from 32.1 to 67.9 kbps, achieving average improvements of 2.24%, 2.98%, and 9.53% relative to the strongest benchmark (A-Geo). These results indicate that AxisGeo provides improved routing performance across the evaluated FANET scenarios.
Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, Jawad Tanveer, Amir Masoud Rahmani et al.· Journal of King Saud Univers...· 0 citations
FANETs are fundamental to today's aerial missions, but their dynamic topology makes routing a challenging task. The design of an effective routing protocol remains a critical and challenging problem in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication networks. Transmitting information in low-altitude environments is inherently complex, making it a significant scientific challenge to develop a routing protocol capable of ensuring efficient and reliable node-to-node packet delivery. To address this, this paper conducts more realistic simulation-based performance tests and comparisons across three classic routing protocols Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), and Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) analyzing performance parameters such as data dropped. The experimental findings show that different routing protocols are better suited to different UAV communication network scenarios, and the resulting quantitative insights can serve as a useful reference for selecting the most appropriate routing protocol for a given scenario.
Parambir Singh, H. Arri· 2026 International Conferenc...· 0 citations
Simulation results indicate that HOA-MEPFL-CLCT-RP outperforms existing models in terms of Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), energy efficiency, End-to-End Delay (E2D), and routing overhead.
Shaleena H, Sumangala K· International journal of com...· 0 citations
A two-level Q-learning-based geographic routing protocol called TLQ-Geo for FANETs, which significantly reduces convergence time and computational overhead and integrates hierarchical decision-making with adaptive reinforcement learning.
Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, Jawad Tanveer, Amir Masoud Rahmani et al.· Journal of King Saud Univers...· 0 citations
Applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly increasing in surveillance, disaster management, precision agriculture, logistics, environmental monitoring, and intelligent transportation systems. UAVs/drones have made their way towards the application of ad hoc networks. Multiple interconnected UAVs flying together have presented us with a new type of ad hoc network known as flying ad hoc networks (FANETs). While multiple small UAVs acting as a FANET offer a lot of benefits, there are also several challenges concerning this type of network. This study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of FANET technologies by reviewing recent literature published between 2017 and 2025 from IEEE Xplore, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar databases. A structured review methodology based on inclusion and exclusion criteria was adopted to analyze more than 150 research articles. The study presents a comprehensive taxonomy of FANET mobility models and routing protocols, along with a comparative analysis of communication architectures, trajectory optimization methods, and implementation challenges. The findings reveal that routing efficiency, adaptive mobility models, secure communication, energy optimization, and scalable architectures are the major determinants of FANET performance. This article concludes that good connectivity, improved security, effective routing, carefully selected mobility models, and the architecture of FANET nodes are key parameters for obtaining optimal results.
Taher M. Ghazal, N. El Kadhi, Munir Ahmad· International Journal of Adv...· 0 citations
An extensive evaluation of Software-Defined Networking integrated with two traffic engineering technologies, Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Segment Routing (SR), applied to the AODV and OLSR routing protocols demonstrates that SR with distance-based IS-IS metrics achieves the highest Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) and lowest delay.
Ronild Hako, E. Spaho, Andres Annuk· Network· 0 citations
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