LECAR: Location Estimation-Based Congestion-Aware Routing Protocol for Sparsely Deployed Energy-Efficient UAVs

Energy-efficient routing has become a critical issue for advanced energy-hungry unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Routing in a flying ad hoc network is always challenging and becomes even more critical when a small number of UAVs must cover a large area. The routing protocols based on the delay-tolerant network (DTN) are best suited for such scenarios. However, traditional DTN-based routing protocols depend on data dissemination to offer a better packet delivery ratio, leading to congestion and excess transmissions, causing heavy and unnecessary energy consumption. We propose a location estimation-based congestion-aware routing protocol (LECAR) to balance these two issues. Considering outdated location information, LECAR takes advantage of the mobility model to estimate the current location of the destination. In addition, LECAR routes a packet by considering both the distance to destination and buffer occupancy of the neighboring UAVs. Simulation results show that LECAR could ensure both a high packet delivery ratio and low energy consumption. Moreover, LECAR could provide a minimal number of transmissions, while minimizing the number of copies per packet at a time.