QoS-Guaranteed Robust Routing Based on Maximum Link Available Time in Fanets

Flying ad-hoc networks (FANETs) have gained significant attention due to their wide-ranging applications in industries such as defense, agriculture, and industrial automation, facilitated by advancements in embedded systems. However, FANETs present unique challenges, including limited energy resources, high mobility, and constantly changing topologies, which make traditional routing protocols designed for mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) ill-suited for FANETs. This paper proposes a quality of service (QoS) -guaranteed robust routing (QGRR) scheme tailored to FANETs. Specifically, we introduce a method to estimate the link availability between two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), considering factors such as motion dynamics, link quality, and residual energy. We then design a routing algorithm to maximize the end-to-end (E2E) path availability under time constraints related to delay and energy consumption. This problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model, corresponding to the well-known NP-hard unsplittable flow problem. To solve this, we relax the MILP and apply random rounding to recover the binary variables. The simulation results demonstrate that, compared to the baseline algorithms, the proposed scheme achieves superior throughput, extended network lifetime, and reduced energy consumption.