Trust-Based Dynamic Leader Selection Mechanism for Enhanced Performance in Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs)

To ensure effective communication and monitoring, Flying Ad-hoc Networks (FANETs) with limited energy must always work together. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a Trusted Dynamic Leader Selection for FANETs (TDLS-FANET), which aims to designate a leader drone that will guide other drones. Using a trust-based mechanism, the proposed approach discerns reliable neighboring Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) while identifying and isolating potential malicious UAVs. According to the proposed scheme, trust score is calculated based on three parameters including quality of service (QoS), social trust, and fitness score. A number of parameters are taken into account when calculating the direct trust between neighboring UAVs, including the delay, packet delivery ratio, and signal strength. Indirect trust is derived from recommendation trust. Based on the residual energy and average distance of drones that are closer to the base station (BS), a fitness score is calculated. On the basis of their final trust scores, the system forms an efficient classification of clusters. TDLS-FANET can also select dynamic leaders among several drones based on their physical constraints at varying intervals. To assess performance characteristics such as energy consumption, packet delivery ratio, and transmission delay of the proposed TDLS-FANET with the existing trust based models, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed TDLS-FANET reduces delay by 24%, lowers energy consumption by 19%, and increases packet delivery rates by more than 30%. It can limit delay by up to 41% in extreme situations. In FANETs, the proposed method improves accuracy and adaptability by selecting the dynamic leader drone efficiently. As a result, the performance metrics of TDLS-FANET are superior to those of existing systems.