A Particle Swarm Mobility Model for Flying Ad Hoc Networks

Flying Ad hoc Network (FANET) is a special type of Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET), which is a collection of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) forming a self- configuring network without using any existing infrastructure. Since FANETs are not currently deployed on a large scale, research in this area is mostly simulation based. The mobility model plays a fundamental role in constructing simulation environment for enabling upper layer research. Existing mobility models mostly target general MANETs, and they are unable to capture the unique features of fast moving UAVs in the context of FANETs. In this paper, we propose a group mobility model called Particle Swarm Mobility Model (PSMM) based on particle swarming for FANETs. The distinct feature of PSMM is that it can mimic the UAV swarm movement with a simple computational framework. It captures both the temporal correlation of a UAV itself as well as the spatial correlation across multiple UAVs that are flying as a coordinated group. We validate the effectiveness of PSMM using a set of relevant metrics. The experimental results show that PSMM meets these metrics well and can provide a solid infrastructure for simulation-based FANET research.