A Multi-Channel Load Awareness Based MAC Protocol for Flying AD Hoc Networks

Flying Ad hoc Network (FANET) is a promising and special mobile Ad hoc network, connecting large number of flying Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) on battlefield through wireless links. Designing a low delay, large capacity, high flexibility, strong scalability, and multi-priority traffic differentiated Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is a great challenge in the researches and applications of FANETs. In order to overcome the disadvantages in IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) protocols, we present a novel multi-channel load awareness based MAC protocol for FANETs in this paper. We intensively describe the multi-priority queueing and scheduling mechanism, and the multi-channel load based backoff mechanism involved in the protocol. We further model the backoff mechanism by a Markov chain model. Simulation results show that the protocol can differentiate services for different priorities in FANETs according to the real-time channel state, provide effective QoS guarantee for transmissions of various information, and utilize the network bandwidth resources efficiently.