Adaptive Routing for Flying Ad Hoc Network using Evolvable Route Expiration Time

Release time:2026-05-23 Hits:

DOI number:10.1109/TMC.2026.3694704

Journal:IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing

Key Words:Routing, Loading, Telecommunication traffic, AODV, Autonomous aerial vehicles

Abstract:Flying ad hoc network (FANET) consists of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and can provide robust connectivity in various scenarios (e.g., search-and-rescue and emergency communications). Routing is crucial to unleash the potential of FANET. Existing routing approaches are either host-centric (e.g., AODV) or content-centric (e.g., NDNF and LFBL). To the best of our knowledge, only a few studies attempt to integrate the two routing paradigms, but fail to exploit their complementary strengths. This paper proposes the Evolvable Route Expiration Time (eRET) framework, which allows each UAV node to dynamically adjust its routing paradigm by properly configuring the route expiration time (RET). Specifically, this paper first derives key insights into routing adaptability across different FANET environments. Building on these insights, the proposed eRET framework comprises (i) a distributed environment perception mechanism that enables each UAV node to perceive the topology dynamics, traffic load, and request pattern of the FANET, and (ii) a RET evolution policy that updates the route expiration time to guide UAV nodes toward a suitable routing paradigm. Packet-level simulation results show that eRET outperforms state-of-the-art host-centric and content-centric routing protocols. In a representative search-and-rescue scenario, eRET reduces total packet loss by up to 52.91% and 65.24% compared to AODV and NDNF, respectively.

Co-author:Tang Mingsheng

Indexed by:Journal paper

First-Level Discipline:Computer Science and Technology

Document Type:J

Page Number:1-17

ISSN No.:1536-1233

Translation or Not:no

Date of Publication:2026-05-19

Included Journals:SCI、EI

Links to published journals:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11524087