Abstract: Flying ad hoc network is a hot topic in current research, particularly concerning the design of routing mechanisms. The primary challenge lies in managing routing overhead, which can lead to network collapse as the number of UAV nodes increases. To address this issue in large-scale UAVs scenarios, a virtual backbone network is constructed using the unifying connected dominating set algorithm, thereby reducing the number of nodes in route flooding. Next, the NBATMAN-ADV (new better approach to mobile ad-hoc networking-advanced) routing protocol is deployed on the backbone nodes. This protocol evaluates link quality using the received signal strength index and signal-to-noise ratio of the physical layer data, enabling rapid detection of link changes while reducing the routing overhead. Simulation results show that the proposed routing protocol has significantly improved packet delivery rate, end-to-end delay and throughput compared with traditional proactive routing protocols such as optimized link state routing and destination-sequenced distance vector. Experimental results on communication module show that the proposed routing protocol exhibits superior performance in terms of multi-hop delay.

Key words: flying ad hoc network, virtual backbone, unifying connected dominating set algorithm, NBATMAN-ADV routing protocol