Jingjing Wang, Houze Feng, Jianrui Chen, Lin Zhou, Mengyuan Zhang, Chunxiao Jiang
Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) offer flexible, real-time wireless communication solutions for multi-drone systems by utilizing drones as network routers. However, FANETs’ unique characteristics, including high mobility, unstable network topology, and intermittent connectivity, pose significant challenges in designing efficient and reliable routing protocols. Traditional routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks often fall short in highly dynamic airborne environments due to excessive control overhead, increased latency, and inefficient route maintenance. To address these issues, this paper proposes an enhanced on-demand predictive (EDP) routing protocol that integrates a neighbor coverage-based predictive flooding mechanism and an adaptive link quality-based route maintenance strategy. The flooding mechanism mitigates directional deafness by using a Kalman filter-based probabilistic forwarding model, while the route maintenance method optimizes path selection based on distance, traffic load, and link lifetime. Simulation results show that EDP significantly improves packet delivery rate, reduces network delay, and lowers overhead compared to benchmarks, making it well-suited for applications in FANETs.