A Comparison Study of Wireless Mesh Routing Protocols for Internet of Flying Things Applications

Ad-hoc networks have become essential in modern communication infrastructure to help expand the range of available Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In particular, Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET) consists of mobile nodes connected wirelessly in a self-configurated and self-healing network. In these networks, nodes do have not a static communication infrastructure and every node act as an access point capable of forwarding traffic to other nodes. With the freedom provided by MANET, multiple heterogeneous devices are accessible to the Internet, besides mobile phones, tablets, and notebooks. So, these heterogeneous devices can play an essential role in developing innovative IoT or Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications. An example are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that in recent years increased their popularity due to their versatility, flexibility, reduced cost, easy installation, and relatively small operating expenses. UAV allows their usage in innovative applications for both military and civil domain, such as national border surveillance, disaster monitoring, remote sensing and traffic monitoring. In this specific case, Flying Ad-hoc NETwork (FANET) evolved the concept of MANET towards networks composed of UAV devices where nodes communicate between them and with a ground base station. FANET have opened opportunities to create new value-added services in Internet of Flying Things (IoFT) applications. They can operate independently transmitting the mesh network data flow among FANET nodes or directly to the ground base station. Moreover, they can also support different communication protocols for linking the FANET to mobile phone or satellite networks. For instance, Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 5G protocols to provide connectivity to send data over the Internet or Geographical Positioning System (GPS) to estimate geolocation of UAV inside the FANET with data coming from satellites. In recent years, FANET have evolved significantly and different works in the literature presented innovative mesh routing protocols to allow their automated self-configuration and self-healing. These protocols ensure that routing tables of nodes are automatically adjusted in case of disconnection or damage of particular nodes in the FANET. This dissertation proposes a performance benchmarking of different wireless routing mesh protocols in the context of FANET management, that are i) Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR), ii)Better Approach To Mobile Ad-hoc Networking (BATMAN), and iii) Babel. Each mesh routing protocol has been comprehensively analysed theoretically and compared with each other. Then, an emulated UAV network based on different RaspberryPi has been implemented to benchmark performances of the mesh routing protocols under analysis in an emulated FANET. The evaluation of the mesh routing protocols and their comparison has been carried out by means of different Key Performance Indicators (e.g. bandwidth, latency). Finally, the BATMAN scenario has been extended to test a real UAV application by means of MAVLink, an extremely lightweight messaging communication protocol used to communicate with drones, and PX4, an open-source autopilot system. The study is a part of a research project in collaboration with the University of Bologna that aims to benchmark the performance and security features of wireless mesh networks in the context of UAV system management.