ROUTING PROTOCOLS IN FANET FOR DISASTER AREA NETWORKS: A REVIEW

A group of small, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) linked together in an ad hoc fashion is called a Flying Ad hoc Network (FANET). The main characteristics of FANETs are the absence of central control, mobility, self-organizing, and flexibility, which makes FANET a suitable solution for disaster relief applications where the typical communication infrastructure is likely to be malfunction. UAVs can be used to scan the afflicted region in search and rescue missions and help set up communication network for survivors of disasters, emergency responders, and the nearest cellular infrastructure. To create a stable and robust connection between numerous flying UAVs in an ad-hoc network, suitable communication routing protocols that could be implemented on highly dynamic networks are required. This paper reviews and investigates current FANET routing protocols to determine which routing protocol is the most appropriate in a particular disaster scenario. In addition, reviewing the mechanism, the performance of existing routing protocols, the simulators utilized, routing metrics, performance metrics, advantages and disadvantages, and the potential application in disaster areas of those protocols. The result of the analysis and investigation of this work indicates that for each disaster situation, there is no particular routing protocol; protocol selection is depending on a number of criteria, including network size, network density, UAV velocity, and disaster application.