Performance Analysis of Routing Protocols for UAV Communication Networks

The design of routing protocol is an important and key problem in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication networks. In low altitude environment, UAV information transmission is a complex task. It is an important scientific challenge to design a routing protocol that can provide efficient and reliable node to node packet transmission. This paper develops a more realistic simulation environment based on OPNET 14.5, and performs performance tests and comparisons on four classic routing protocols: Ad Hoc on demand distance vector (AODV), dynamic source routing (DSR), optimized link state routing (OLSR), and geographic routing protocol (GRP). The performance parameters such as network delay, traffic received, data dropped and throughput are compared and analyzed. The experimental results indicate that different routing protocols can be adapted to different UAV communication network scenarios. Therefore, the quantitative results can provide pertinent reference for choosing the best routing protocol in different scenarios.