Review of Protocol Stack Development of Flying Ad-hoc Networks for Disaster Monitoring Applications

When disasters such as floods or earthquakes occur, we may not have a support of regular infrastructure based networks. This proves fatal because people who are trapped can not be easily located by search and rescue team. In such cases, airborne network consisting of miniaturized drones can be extremely beneficial in providing quick and effective coverage of the affected area, in an on-demand manner providing instant insights to rescue teams. While the challenges offered by such networks are plenty, the ongoing research and development shows promise to make such a technology more reliable and effective. In this paper, we discuss various disaster events in which network of drones can play a vital role in offering support to rescue operations. Mainly, the article discusses the protocols proposed by researchers for various layers of protocol stack including physical layer, data link layer, network layer, transport layer, application layer along with clustering protocols, time synchronization protocols and localization protocols. Finally, a brief summary of software simulation platforms and testbeds, along with future trends of Flying Ad-hoc networks have been provided.