Performance Study of ETX Metric in Flight Ad-Hoc Networks

Abstract

Flying Ad-hoc networks (FANETs) are wireless networks that allow unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to interact with one another without a permanent infrastructure. For effective data transfer in FANETs, routing protocols like Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) are crucial.

While several studies have investigated the use of ETX (Expected Transmission Count) in specialized networks such as Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) and mesh networks, there is a lack of comprehensive study across routing protocols under FANETs.

• This research gap shows how important it is to have a structured way to check how well ETX
• metrics work in FANETs, taking into account things taking into account network structure,
• mobility patterns, and environmental circumstances.

The research examined the efficacy of ETX and hop count routing metrics utilizing the NS-3 network simulator. In this research, simulations of Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol were conducted in two scenarios: one employing the ETX metric (AODV-ETX) and the other utilizing the conventional hop count metric (original AODV). Various performance metrics, including average throughput, average end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio (PDR), and useful traffic ratio (UTR), are evaluated.

The results show that in varying density of network environments, the ETX metric leads to higher delays but improves packet delivery ratios, throughput, and UTR. However, in scenarios with varying speeds of UAVs, it leads to a high end-to-end delay, a lower packet delivery ratio, lower throughput, and a lower UTR, compared with the hop-count metric. It is observed as well that the ETX metric performed better than the hop count metric in terms of end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, throughput, and UTR when the network load changes.