MWCRSF: Mobility-based weighted cluster routing scheme for FANETs

Flying Ad-Hoc Network (FANET) formed by a swarm of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is currently a trending research topic because of its capability in performing complex tasks more rapidly and efficiently. However, the high-speed mobility of UAVs, limited energy, and dynamically changing topology have led to critical challenges for the reliability of communication between UAVs, especially when designing routing schemes in FANET. In this paper, we introduce a Mobility-based Weighted Cluster Routing Scheme (MWCRSF) for FANET performance enhancement within the constraints of network resources. MWCRSF utilizes the high-level search efficiency of the Sparrow Search Algorithm (SSA) and a new clustering algorithm based on SSA is first proposed to set up the initial UAV clusters. A weighted sum-based algorithm is then proposed for Cluster Head (CH) selection, where the residual energy, node correlation degree, relative mobility, distance to the Base Station (BS), and average distance are adopted as the selection criteria. To keep the UAV clusters updated, an efficient cluster maintenance algorithm is proposed as well. In order to provide timely and reliable data transmission to the BS, the optimal next-hop route selection is performed considering the link lifetime, residual energy, and distance between nodes and BS. We exploit the power of skyline operators in multi-criteria decision-making to reduce the search space and improve the efficiency of CH selection and next-hop routing. The simulation results reveal that the proposed MWCRSF scheme outperforms the existing methods under different metrics including cluster lifetime, energy efficiency, throughput, and network lifetime.