Empowering Wireless Mesh UAV Networks through Software-Defined Networking

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been widely deployed in applications such as environmental monitoring, disaster response, and surveillance. Effective coordination between UAVs depends on low-latency inter-UAV communication to exchange state information, decisions, and other critical data. UAV networks are inherently dynamic which necessitates a framework capable of handling scenarios such as traffic re-routing, and resilience to communication failures. To address the challenges of managing dynamic UAV networks, this thesis proposes a dual network approach composed of three main components. First, the Better Approach to Mobile Ad-hoc Networking (BATMAN) protocol is used to enable communication among UAVs. Second, the OpenFlow protocol will facilitate communication between a central controller and the UAVs. Third, a graphical user interface (GUI) is developed to allow the controller to visualize the network topology and request data. The proposed framework is evaluated on a testbed consisting of one controller and two Raspberry Pis acting as OpenFlow devices.