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Abstract The rapid and uncontrolled urbanization of cities in developing countries has engendered a plethora of urban mobility issues, including traffic congestion, accidents, and air pollution. To address these challenges, contemporary urban mobility trends are incorporating innovative technologies and sustainable governance practices. This article investigates how urban managers can leverage the opportunities presented by cost‐effective technologies and the management of urban data to enhance urban mobility in developing countries. Within this discourse, an RSU‐based approach is proposed that employs motorbike taxis for inter‐vehicular communication, given their status as the most widely used form of public transportation. This approach substantially diminishes investment costs and reinforces the sustainability of urban mobility. Through the implementation of this solution, a noteworthy reduction is anticipated in the emission of gases such as CO2, and NOx, known contributors to climate change and various respiratory diseases. To validate the efficacy of the proposed solution, four distinct scenarios are scrutinized in a case study centered on the city of Douala in Cameroon, utilizing tools such as OMNET++, SUMO, Veins, and INET. The proposed framework offers significant benefits in terms of environmental sustainability and operational efficiency. It enables a 10% reduction in CO2 emissions, a 15% reduction in NOx emissions, an 11% drop in fuel consumption, and a 15% reduction in waiting time in traffic jams. The envisaged solution aims to aid urban managers in their decision‐making processes, specifically in advancing sustainable urban mobility. Through the adoption of this approach, cities in developing countries can mitigate challenges associated with urban mobility and enhance the overall well‐being of their residents.

Abstract In a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET), vehicles communicate with each other (V2V) and with infrastructure (V2I) to optimise routing and reach their destinations efficiently. Various routing protocols in the VANET environment facilitate the dissemination of different types of messages, such as those for emergencies or traffic updates. However, previous research has not sufficiently addressed the challenges of energy efficiency, security, and reliability in VANET routing. This work aims to fill that gap by analysing the performance of three major VANET routing protocols—ad hoc on‐demand distance vector (AODV), Optimised Link State Routing (OLSR), and Destination Sequenced Distance Vector—integrated with elliptic curve integrated encryption. The goal is to determine the most suitable routing protocol based on these key parameters. The study involves two key processes: registration and authentication, and the analysis of ECIE‐enhanced routing protocols (ECIE‐AODV, ECIE‐OLSR, and ECIE‐DSDV). These protocols were simulated using OMNET++ and SUMO tools, and the results were evaluated based on metrics such as throughput, packet delivery ratio, end‐to‐end delay (e2e), jitter, and routing overhead.

Abstract Delay tolerant networks (DTNs) is a network evolved from mobile networks. Differing from the traditional network, which has a stable end‐to‐end transmission path, DTNs are sparse and intermittently connected mobile ad hoc network, which are widely used in harsh environments, such as battlefields, seabed, space communication networks, and so on. In DTNs, intermittent connectivity, partitioned network, long delays and node mobility characteristics make the network fail to communicate frequently, therefore, how to successfully forward the message is of extreme importance. Up to now, almost all the traditional models in DTNs use the store‐carry‐forward method. This paper proposes a novel clustered DTN routing model based on sensing node relationship strength. The routing mechanism takes advantage of the number of other nodes encountered by the nodes in the process of movement and the changes in the number of nodes to calculate the strength of the relationship between nodes, and clusters DTN routing according to the strength of the relationship between nodes. Moreover, the relationship between nodes in a cluster and other clusters is used to transmit messages between clusters, and messages are transmitted within clusters according to the strength of the relationship between nodes. Simulation results show that the routing mechanism not only increases the success rate of message transmission, but also reduces the transmission delay of messages and improves network performance.

Abstract One of the significant challenges of the Radio over fibre (RoF) Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is the propagation delay. This delay can lead to serious issues, such as higher propagation delay resulting in collisions and unnecessary retransmissions. Quantum entanglement is an excellent candidate to overcome the propagation delay of the RoF MAC protocol. A new quantum MAC protocol is proposed, named the Quantum Entanglement‐based MAC protocol (QE‐MAC), in which Quantum Teleportation is utilised to address the propagation delay. Four entanglement states are employed to represent the control packets of the classical MAC protocol, and data is transmitted over the classical channel. Instead of using control packets such as acknowledgement, request to send, and Clear to send, state transitions are employed. This approach avoids the delay and collision issues associated with control packets, resulting in a significant improvement in network performance. The delay, duty cycle (DC), and power consumption of the proposed QE‐MAC protocol are formulated and derived. The protocol is evaluated in terms of delay, DC, and power consumption, demonstrating superior performance compared to the classical RoF MAC protocol. In comparison to published works, our proposed approach has successfully reduced both delay and power consumption by 35%.

Abstract The escalating issue of forest fires poses severe risks to ecosystems and human habitats, primarily due to the greenhouse effect and sudden climate changes. These fires, mostly occurring naturally, necessitate prompt detection and control. Addressing this, the authors introduce the Forest Fire Detection, Prediction, and Behaviour Analysis (FDPA) system, an innovative Internet of Things (IoT) solution. The FDPA system leverages a wireless sensor network to efficiently detect and analyse fire behaviour, providing real‐time data on fire spread, speed, and direction. Uniquely, it can anticipate natural fires hours before they occur by monitoring ecological parameters such as humidity, temperature, and using the Chandler Burning Index (CBI) for quantifying fire danger. Designed for the challenging forest environment, the FDPA system prioritises minimal power usage and simple components, crucial in areas with limited power resources. Its resilient design ensures the wireless sensor network and sensor nodes withstand harsh weather and fire conditions, maintaining functionality and reliability. Field tests of the FDPA system in various Jordanian forest locations, including Burgish–Ajloun, have demonstrated its effectiveness. The trials revealed the system's capability in early fire detection, low latency response, predicting fire behaviour, and determining fire spread direction. Continuous monitoring of the forest ecosystem and rapid detection allow authorities to act swiftly, preventing potential fires from escalating. Furthermore, the system tracks ecological changes within the forest, offering insights into imminent natural fires. This feature enables proactive measures to mitigate fire spread, safeguarding the environment and nearby communities. The strategic placement of sensor nodes and the use of durable yet straightforward components reduce the risk of system damage due to environmental extremities. Overall, the FDPA system emerges as a promising tool for forest fire management. Its ability to detect, predict, and analyse forest fires in real‐time positions it as a vital asset in minimising the detrimental impacts of forest fires on the environment and human settlements.

Abstract In unmanned aerial vehicle ad‐hoc network (UANET), the node speed of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may reach up to 400 km/h. The fast or slow movement of UAV nodes leads to different speeds of topology change of the nodes. Traditional optimized link state routing (OLSR) protocol cannot adaptively adjust the routing update period when the network topology changes, which may lead to the nodes calculating incorrect routing tables. This increases the average end‐to‐end delay and packet loss rate for packet transmission. To enhance the adaptability of OLSR routing protocol to network topology changes, this paper proposes a multi‐agent independent deep deterministic policy gradient‐OLSR (MA‐IDDPG‐OLSR) routing protocol based on distributed multi‐agent reinforcement learning. The protocol deploys DDPG algorithm on each UAV node, and each UAV node adaptively adjusts the Hello and TC message sending intervals, according to the one‐hop neighbouring nodes as well as its own state. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol is able to improve the throughput and reduce the packet loss rate as compared to traditional AODV, GRP, OLSR, and distributed multiple‐agent independent proximal policy optimization‐OLSR (MA‐IPPO‐OLSR), distributed multiple‐agent independent twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient‐OLSR (MA‐ITD3‐OLSR) routing protocols. Since MA‐IDDPG‐OLSR relies only on local information, there is a minor performance degradation in MA‐IDDPG‐OLSR compared to centralized single‐agent DQN‐OLSR routing protocol. But it is more suitable to a completely distributed UAV network without a centralized node.

Abstract Clustering algorithm is the primary technology used in target clustering and group status analysis which are key features of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) control system. Due to variable application environment, the stability of the algorithm in the UAVs control system needs to be considered. K‐means clustering is a widely used method in intelligent systems. However, K‐means algorithm is susceptible to the local optimum due to the influence of the initial centroid. For this problem, the predecessors have proposed various effective solutions. These algorithms perform better on real and large‐scale datasets, but they are unable to achieve optimum results with unbalanced datasets. Herein, a simpler and more effective algorithm for seed initialization is proposed, it has a better accuracy rate than the alternative algorithms.Moreover, after running tests multiple times with each algorithm independently, it has the highest stability and the lowest overall volatility. With unbalanced datasets, the proposed algorithm performs significantly better than several other algorithms and therefore can solve the problems that other algorithms have with unbalanced datasets.

Ultraviolet technology has a wide range of applications in military and civilian fields, such as space detection, ultraviolet light guidance, ultraviolet interference, corona discharge detection and military communications. Starting from the single and multiple scattering of ultraviolet light, this paper first introduces the progress of ultraviolet optical communication at home and abroad. Then it analyzes the different links in ultraviolet optical communication. Next, it discusses the pulse broadening effect and atmospheric turbulence of ultraviolet communication in non-direct link ultraviolet communication. Finally, the paper summarizes the ultraviolet Ad Hoc network, and shows the trend of the development of ultraviolet optical communication.

Ad Hoc network is widely used because of its distributed flexibility, in which nodes may generate different types of traffic, and some high-priority traffic requires lower delay and other Quality of service (QoS) requirements. However, as the load of traffic increases, the probability of conflict increases significantly, which makes it difficult to guarantee the requirement of these traffic. It is significant to design the efficient multiple access protocol to ensure the quality of different kinds of traffic. Channel reservation mechanism is an important method to ensure QoS. However, the existing channel reservation mechanism does not fine-adjust reservation parameters according to the QoS when dealing with various traffic differently, and the differentiation mechanism is rough. In addition, it is difficult to ensure the performance of common services when low-latency services are met. Therefore, a differentiated service guarantee adaptive reservation mechanism (DSGARM) to solve the above problems is proposed. The core idea of the protocol is to provide differentiated services in detail according to the delay tolerance requirements of each business. Absolute reservation mechanism is used to guarantee delay-sensitive services, and relative reservation mechanism is used to service relatively delay-insensitive services. In the protocol, a model is established to design an adaptive algorithm to quantitatively calculate reservation parameters that meet the delay requirements. On the premise of prioritized reservation for various services, appropriate reservation parameters can be adjusted according to network conditions to ensure the delay tolerance requirements of each type of service. The present work can be widely applied to scenarios with differentiated business requirements. The simulation results show the advantages of the present protocol and have great practical significance.

Abstract Poisson multi‐Bernoulli Mixture (PMBM) filter has been known as an available or practical point and multiple extended target tracking (METT) method. The authors present an improved PMBM filter with adaptive detection probability and adaptive newborn distributions, accompanying with an associated distributed fusion strategy for the tracking extended multiple targets. First, the augmented state of unknown and changing target detection probability is assumed as Gamma (GAM) distribution. Second, extended states are described by Inverse Wishart (IW) distribution based on this augmented state, accompanying with dynamic states presented by Gaussian distribution. And then, an adaptive newborn distribution is adopted to describe the newborn targets appearing arbitrarily. Consequently, the closed‐form solutions of the proposed filter can be derived by approximating the intensity of newborn and potential targets to the Gamma Gaussian Inverse Wishart (GGIW) form. Moreover, the fused means that Generalised Covariance Intersection (GCI) is performed in such a large‐scale aquaculture sensor network. Experiments are presented to verify the availability of the GCI‐GGIW‐PMBM method, and comparisons with other METT filters also demonstrate that tracking behaviours are improved largely.

Self-organization is a key strategy for improving the performance of an aerial swarm ad hoc network. The proliferation of low-cost VTOL drones has broadened the application domain of aerial swarms, and the need for synchronized communication among network entities has become crucial. However, existing ad hoc approaches struggle to maintain multi-hop connections in contested environments characterized by frequent topology changes and intermittent links. To overcome these limitations, we introduced STDMA protocol, which enables the self-configuration of drones without reliance on a ground controller. In continuation of the earlier work, we conduct extensive experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol. Comparative simulation experiments cover various scenarios with different network sizes, frame lengths, and traffic loads. The STDMA protocol achieves optimal access delay in highly contested environments and reduces delay by approximately 19.181%. Moreover, it exhibits improved channel utilization compared to the E-ASAP/SM protocol, with a 4.5 times increase.

The cooperative QoS Aware Based Data Congestion Control (QoS-ADCC) algorithm is proposed to achieve this goal. It leverages QoS indicators such as connection probability, packet arrival rate, and delay to determine the best route from the source to the destination. These indicators are evaluated for each road segment and combined with estimated relay quality. The QoS-ADCC algorithm combines passive and preventive elements to establish and maintain the routing of data packets. If the source route to the target path is unavailable, the algorithm employs forward and backward reactions to search for candidate routes. The selected route is implemented in the wireless network, and pheromone levels are updated as packets pass through intersections. This approach reduces overhead and transmission delay, utilizing dedicated lanes on urban buses to establish a mobile backbone network and enhance vehicle connectivity. The proposed QoS-ADCC algorithm selects relay data packets between intersections based on QoS dynamic road segments, aiming for a straightforward and efficient routing mechanism. The research involves evaluating different routing protocols and congestion control mechanisms, considering factors such as route stability, end-to-end delay, throughput, and packet loss rate. Simulation experiments using network simulators like NS-3 and OMNET++ as well as real-world testbed experiments will be conducted to assess the performance of the proposed system. The findings of this research will contribute to the development of efficient and reliable data routing mechanisms in MANETs for intelligent transportation systems, ensuring high QoS and improved network performance. Overall, the proposed QoS-ADCC algorithm demonstrates promising results with a throughput value of 31000 Mbps, a Link Stability Speed of 40 meters, a Packet Delivery Ratio of 1.2%, and a routing overhead of 1. These outcomes highlight the potential of the algorithm to enhance data delivery in MANETs within ITS.

Abstract In a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), all nodes are communicated with one another across wireless networks to create a temporary network without the support of centralised management. Due to dynamic topology in MANET, secure routing is a crucial issue. The existing secure routing protocol and their security concerns are analysed in this work. The suggested Swarm Intelligence‐based Secure Ad‐hoc On‐demand Distance Vector (SIS‐AODV) algorithm offers security by applying a secret key and hash mechanism to prevent the involvement of malicious nodes in routing operations. A secure routing system of MANET guards against internal and external network attacks. The proposed SIS‐AODV algorithm consists of two sections: the secret key value generated by applying Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC)‐based algorithm and the PRESENT algorithm to encrypt the data packets. Besides, authentication and non‐repudiation are applied using the H‐PRESENT 128 algorithm. The PRESENT algorithm and H‐PRESENT 128 hash function require less computational power. Centralised management is optional in this scheme, so overhead decreases. The second section of SIS‐AODV consists of Ant Colony Grey Wolf Optimization over the AODV algorithm to improve network performance while implementing a security algorithm over MANET. Analysis results show maximum performance with a packet delivery ratio of 98% and throughput of 85%. In addition, end‐to‐end delay is reduced by up to 25%, and routing overhead decreases by up to 20%. Keywords: AODV, Elliptical Curve, PRESENT, H‐PRESENT, Euclidean Algorithm, ACO, GWO, Blackhole attack.

The field of wireless communication has undergone revolutionary changes driven by technological advancements in recent years. Central to this evolution is wireless ad hoc networks, which are characterized by their decentralized nature and have introduced numerous possibilities and challenges for researchers. Moreover, most of the existing Internet of Things (IoT) networks are based on ad hoc networks. This study focuses on the exploration of interference management and Medium Access Control (MAC) schemes. Through statistical derivations and systematic simulations, we evaluate the efficacy of guard zone-based MAC protocols under Rayleigh fading channel conditions. By establishing a link between network parameters, interference patterns, and MAC effectiveness, this work contributes to optimizing network performance. A key aspect of this study is the investigation of optimal guard zone parameters, which are crucial for interference mitigation. The adaptive guard zone scheme demonstrates superior performance compared to the widely recognized Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) and the system-wide fixed guard zone protocol under fading channel conditions that mimic real-world scenarios. Additionally, simulations reveal the interactions between network variables such as node density, path loss exponent, outage probability, and spreading gain, providing insights into their impact on aggregated interference and guard zone effectiveness.

Abstract Given the observed developments of novel communication modes and the establishment of next‐generation cellular networks, mobility modelling and ad hoc routing requirements have emerged. Flying ad hoc networks are key pivots in enabling technological leaps in the domain of on‐demand communications, especially in emergency scenarios; as such, resorting to application‐ and mobility‐aware routing is a promising enabler of this emerging set of use cases. This article investigates swarm mobility modelling, and applicable routing protocols, conducting comparative analysis that leads to the introduction of the new Anchored Self‐Similar 3D Gauss‐Markov Mobility Model (ASSGM‐3D), which incorporates a novel set of spatio‐temporal statistical metrics.

Ad hoc networks are a new perspective of wireless communication for versatile hosts. Security is a colossal worry for ad hoc networks, especially for those security-touchy applications. The huge highlights of ad hoc networks cause both difficulties and openings in accomplishing security objectives. One such aim is to consider the assaults from within the system by compromised nodes correspondingly as to consider harmful assaults propelled from outside the system. Designing an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) that suits the security needs and characteristics of ad hoc networks for viable and proficient performance against intrusions is one potential solution to vanquish vulnerabilities. This paper examines a genuine and hurtful attack called, “Malicious Packet Dropping Attack” in the network layer. To secure against this attack, a novel methodology utilizing game theory is proposed. The proposed system monitors the conduct of the neighbor nodes and conquers the demerits such as false positives present in traditional IDS, thereby providing secure correspondence between nodes that communicate with one another to course the traffic from source to destination. With the existence of malicious nodes, the proposed system has accomplished a 42% increase in the packet delivery ratio.

Abstract The rigid body localization (RBL) technique is capable of estimating the state of a rigid body, including its translation and orientation, by utilizing the interactions between sensors and landmarks. The prevalent RBL methods employ precise time‐of‐flight measurements (or range measurements) to estimate the state. However, the clock offsets in range measurements in asynchronous networks are unavoidable, leading to performance degradation for state estimators. Therefore, range difference measurements have been adopted to solve the RBL problem. However, existing approaches struggle to achieve desirable performance while maintaining computational efficiency. To address this issue, a new closed‐form state estimator for asynchronous networks is introduced. The proposed algorithm leverages the Taylor‐series expansion technique to enhance accuracy while keeping computational overhead low. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed method achieves state‐of‐the‐art performance with high computational efficiency under small Gaussian noises.

This paper presents a comprehensive study of capacity characterization in mobile wireless networks employing directive communications and full-duplex communication technology. We address the impact of nodes’ mobility, directive beams, and full-duplex capabilities on the network capacity. Firstly, we derive the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) for a reference receiver, considering the combined effects of mobility, directive beams, and full-duplex communications. The derived SINR is then utilized to calculate the network’s capacity. To validate the proposed model, extensive simulations are performed, incorporating various scenarios of mobility levels, self-interference suppression levels in the full-duplex wireless system, and different receiving thresholds. The simulation results confirm the accuracy and effectiveness of the derived SINR-based capacity characterization model under real-world conditions. Furthermore, we study the probability of a receiver simultaneously decoding multiple packets as a function of the receiver’s threshold and full-duplex self-interference suppression. The probability is crucial for assessing the network performance and facilitating future optimization schemes aimed at regulating the number of competing nodes in a given spatial region. The validated model and probability characterization offer valuable insights into network performance evaluation and can be instrumental in devising future efficient optimization strategies for managing network contention at the medium access control and enhancing the network performance.

This paper deals with the tradeoffs between security, real-time and lifetime performance. Due to the multihop nature of communication wireless ad hoc networks are very vulnerable to attacks. Malicious nodes included in a routing path may misbehave and organize attacks such as black holes. Scaling the number of hops for a packet delivery we trade off energy efficiency against security and real-time communication. To study the multihop communication we propose a hierarchical communication model. The REWARD (receive, watch, redirect) algorithm for secure routing is employed as a main example for corrective actions. Symmetrical routing is a distinguish feature of protocols such as REWARD and we outline the threshold of conflict between power-efficient partitioning of communication links and symmetrical routing.

The OSI model used to be a common network model for years. In the case of ad hoc networks with dynamic topology and difficult radio communications conditions, gradual departure is happening from the classical kind of OSI network model with a clear delineation of layers (physical, channel, network, transport, application) to the cross-layer approach. The layers of the network model in ad hoc networks strongly influence each other. Thus, the cross-layer approach can improve the performance of an ad hoc network by jointly developing protocols using interaction and collaborative optimization of multiple layers. The existing cross-layer methods classification is too complicated because it is based on the whole manifold of network model layer combinations, regardless of their importance. In this work, we review ad hoc network cross-layer methods, propose a new useful classification of cross-layer methods, and show future research directions in the development of ad hoc network cross-layer methods. The proposed classification can help to simplify the goal-oriented cross-layer protocol development.

We consider the problem of meeting deadline constraints in wireless communication networks. Fulfilling deadlines depends heavily on the routing algorithm used. We study this dependence generically for a broad class of routing algorithms. For analyzing the impact of routing decisions on deadline fulfillment, we adopt a stochastic model from operations research to capture the source-to-destination delay distribution and the corresponding probability of successfully delivering data before a given deadline. Based on this model, we propose a decentralized algorithm that operates locally at each node and exchanges information solely with direct neighbors in order to determine the probabilities of achieving deadlines. A modified version of the algorithm also improves routing tables iteratively to progressively increase the deadline achievement probabilities. This modified algorithm is shown to deliver routing tables that maximize the deadline achievement probabilities for all nodes in a given network. We tested the approach by simulation and compared it with routing strategies based on established metrics, specifically the average delay, minimum hop count, and expected transmission count. Our evaluations encompass different channel quality and small-scale fading conditions, as well as various traffic load scenarios. Notably, our solution consistently outperforms the other approaches in all tested scenarios.

Abstract This study addresses the optimisation of on‐demand routing protocols for quantum wireless Ad Hoc network. The study improves the route discovery protocol by proposing a ‘reverse synchronisation method’, which means after the route request is completed, the quantum channel establishment process can be carried out simultaneously with the route reply process. This method is better than the general method which builds quantum channels after the forward path establishment, reduces the time and the number of messages for quantum channel establishment, thus improving the efficiency. Accordingly, this study elaborates the specific methods, procedures and related upgrading message formats involved in quantum route discovery, quantum channel establishment and qubit information transmission of on‐demand routing protocol for quantum wireless Ad Hoc network.

This paper proposes an evolved wireless ad hoc network (WANET) in which user equipment (UE) can manage radio resources by itself without the control by infrastructure. There are two independent channels in the proposed WANET, one is a data channel, the other is a tone channel for resource management. UEs allocate, occupy, and return resources by using tones in the tone channel. Although UEs do not exchange channel information with each other, they are able to occupy a clear one-hop area without a hidden node problem by setting the data communication area and the tone communication area differently. A UE occupying a resource performs a real time collision check on the occupied resource, and if a collision is detected, it is able to re-occupy a resource without collision. In this paper, we present the operating principle of the proposed WANET, and design its communication area, and analyze the average resource occupation time. Since the proposed WANET operates in a general communication environment that is not limited to special assumptions, it supports periodic and aperiodic communication and broadcast links and unicast links without hidden node problem, and could be utilized to various communication fields such as drones, vehicles, ships, and smartphones.

Vehicular ad hoc networks consist of self-organizing nodes using multi-hop wireless links for communication without any infrastructure support. Traditionally, ad hoc routing protocols use the minimum hop count for their routing metric since a smaller number of transmissions is typically equivalent to a higher throughput, lower delay, and minimal power consumption. However, with the muti-rate capability of emerging radio interfaces, e.g., 802.11ax/be standards, the min-hop metric no longer results in high throughput. For instance, if the higher data rate links are selected for the route, it could result in a higher throughput even if the route takes more hop counts. In this paper, we propose a high throughput routing scheme, called MARV, which makes two key contributions. MARV searches for high throughput paths using an on-demand route searching algorithm so that the routing overhead is smaller compared to other multi-rate-aware routing schemes. MARV also searches for multiple paths to maintain both min-hop and high-throughput paths to select the adequate path depending on the data packet size. We conduct simulations to demonstrate that MARV outperforms not only min-hop path metrics but also previously proposed high-throughput metrics.

In recent years, low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) has received widespread popularity with long-range and wide-area communication at low power for the Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Among many vendors of LPWAN, long-range low-power wireless communications, also called LoRa, is one of the competing standards and is well known in both academia and industrial communities as an emerging research area. Among the LoRa applications, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) systems are emerging with the benefits of extended battery life and a long communication range. In this paper, we investigate the network capacity with the mixture of concurrent and sequential transmission (MCST) scheme over LoRa networks. From the simulation results, it can be seen that MCST is suitable for implementation in the LoRa network. Specifically, MCST can achieve higher throughput with low transmission latency and energy consumption compared to the existing CSMA approach LoRa MAC. Besides, we also propose a modified MCST over the LoRa (mMCST/LoRa) scheme to mitigate the transmission latency further. The simulation results reveal a better performance in terms of throughput, latency and energy consumption, regardless of the frame payload size and the number of nodes in the network.

The increasing demand for Internet of Things (IoT) applications has resulted in vast amounts of data, requiring the utilization of big data analytics. The integration of big data analytics in IoT-based smart cities can greatly benefit from the development of wireless communication protocols, among which the Thread protocol has emerged as a promising option. Thread is IEEE 802.15.4 based and has advanced capabilities like mesh networking, IPv6 support, and multiple gateways providing no single point of failure. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a low-cost mesh network using Raspberry Pi, nRF52840 dongle, and OpenThread 1.2 (i.e., an open-source software implementation of the Thread protocol stack). The research elaborates on the hardware and software solutions used, as well as the network topologies adopted. To evaluate the performance of the developed system, extensive real-time tests are performed, considering parameters, such as jitter, packet loss, and round trip time. These tests effectively demonstrate the effectiveness of the Thread network. Furthermore, the impact of varying payload size and bitrate on the network is analyzed to understand its influence. The behavior of the multi-hop network is also examined under link failure scenarios, providing insights into the network’s robustness. Our findings provide valuable insights for researchers interested in designing low-cost and efficient mesh networks for various IoT applications, including home automation, building/campus monitoring systems, distributed industrial IoT applications, and smart city infrastructure.

With the emergence of new technologies and standards for wireless communications and an increase in application and user requirements, the number and density of deployed wireless ad hoc networks is increasing. For deterministic ad hoc networks, Time-Division Multiple Access (TDMA) is a popular medium access scheme, with many distributed TDMA scheduling algorithms being proposed. However, with increasing traffic demands and the number of wireless devices, proposed protocols are facing scalability issues. Besides, these protocols are achieving suboptimal spatial spectrum reuse as a result of the unsolved exposed node problem. Due to a shortage of available spectrum, a shift from fixed spectrum allocation to more dynamic spectrum sharing is anticipated. For dynamic spectrum sharing, improved distributed scheduling protocols are needed to increase spectral efficiency and support the coexistence of multiple co-located networks. Hence, in this paper, we propose a dynamic distributed multi-channel TDMA (DDMC-TDMA) slot management protocol based on control messages exchanged between one-hop network neighbors and execution of slot allocation and removal procedures between sender and receiver nodes. DDMC-TDMA is a topology-agnostic slot management protocol suitable for large-scale and high-density ad hoc networks. The performance of DDMC-TDMA has been evaluated for various topologies and scenarios in the ns-3 simulator. Simulation results indicate that DDMC-TDMA offers near-optimal spectrum utilization by solving both hidden and exposed node problems. Moreover, it proves to be a highly scalable protocol, showing no performance degradation for large-scale and high-density networks and achieving coexistence with unknown wireless networks operating in the same wireless domain.

Characterizing the topology of MANETs provides the means for packet routing protocols to perform adaptively and efficiently in the particular environments. We show that the geographic routing’s greedy packet forwarding distance dissimilarity distributions in relation to node size characterizes MANET topologies and supports efficient multi-greedy forwarding. The models we described, based on the average greedy packet forwarding distance measures, showed distinct distribution patterns of the dissimilarity indices when applied to the example multi-greedy routing environment consisting of the ELLIPSOID and the GREEDY forwarding metrics. The scheme demonstrates the potential for adaptive forwarding performance to improve successful packets delivery in environments of high node-size variations such as VANETs.

We have previously shown that the geographic routing’s greedy packet forwarding distance (PFD), in dissimilarity values of its average measures, characterizes a mobile ad hoc network’s (MANET) topology by node size. In this article, we demonstrate a distribution-based analysis of the PFD measures that were generated by two representative greedy algorithms, namely GREEDY and ELLIPSOID. The result shows the potential of the distribution-based dissimilarity learning of the PFD in topology characterizing. Characterizing dynamic MANET topology supports context-aware performance optimization in position-based or geographic packet routing.

Delay-tolerant networks (DTNs) are networks where there is no immediate connection between the source and the destination. Instead, nodes in these networks use a store–carry–forward method to route traffic. However, approaches that rely on flooding the network with unlimited copies of messages may not be effective if network resources are limited. On the other hand, quota-based approaches are more resource-efficient but can have low delivery rates and high delivery delays. This paper introduces the Enhanced Message Replication Technique (EMRT), which dynamically adjusts the number of message replicas based on a node’s ability to quickly disseminate the message. This decision is based on factors such as current connections, encounter history, buffer size history, time-to-live values, and energy. The EMRT is applied to three different quota-based protocols: Spray and Wait, Encounter-Based Routing (EBR), and the Destination-Based Routing Protocol (DBRP). The simulation results show that applying the EMRT to these protocols improves the delivery ratio, overhead ratio, and latency average. For example, when combined with Spray and Wait, EBR, and DBRP, the delivery probability is improved by 13%, 8%, and 10%, respectively, while the latency average is reduced by 51%, 14%, and 13%, respectively.

Medium access control (MAC) protocols in ad hoc networks have evolved from single-channel independent transmission mechanisms to multi-channel concurrent mechanisms to efficiently manage the demands placed on modern networks. The primary aim of this study is to compare the performance of popular multi-channel MAC (MMAC) protocols under saturated network traffic conditions and propose improvements to the protocols under these conditions. A novel, dynamically adaptive MMAC protocol was devised to take advantage of the performance capabilities of the evaluated protocols in changing wireless ad hoc network conditions. A simulation of the familiar MAC protocols was developed based on a validated simulation of the IEEE 802.11 standard. Further, the behaviors and performances of these protocols are compared against the proposed MMAC protocols with a varying number of ad hoc stations and concurrent wireless channels in terms of throughput, Jain’s fairness index, and channel access delay. The results show that the proposed MMAC protocol, labeled E-SA-MMAC, outperforms the existing protocols in throughput by up to 11.9% under a constrained number of channels and in channel access delays by up to 18.3%. It can be asserted from these observations that the proposed approach provides performance benefits against its peers under saturated traffic conditions and other factors, such as the number of available wireless channels, and is suitable for dynamic ad hoc network deployments.

Wireless traffic produced by modern mobile devices displays high temporal and spatial dynamics as users spontaneously engage in collective applications where a significant portion of generated data remains localized. As a result, conventional service provisioning approaches may no longer be sufficient in beyond fifth generation (B5G) systems. The challenge of increased dynamics on the access networks can be mitigated with moving cells. However, the deployment time of these temporary serving entities may lag behind the service demand lifetime. Another viable solution to offload excessive cellular traffic is to rely upon locally available radio resources offered by user devices via direct mmWave-based mesh interworking. An important challenge in such systems is related to the incentivization of users to partake in collaborative resource sharing. To leverage multi-hop mesh capabilities, we propose the use of emerging blockchain technology that offers cryptographically-strong accounting while maintaining the anonymity of the participants. With system-level evaluations, we demonstrate that the utilization of mobile blockchain methods allows for a non-incremental improvement in the offloading gains. This demonstrates the potential of the outlined proposal for becoming a successful mechanism in the emerging B5G systems.

A flooding algorithm aims to distribute messages to all nodes within the mobile environment. In a simple flooding scheme, every node broadcasts a newly received message. However, this simple mechanism generates massive redundant messages, which is referred to as the broadcast storm problem. To ease the negative effect of the broadcast storm problem, we proposed a novel scheme, Probabilistic Second-chance broadcasting with/without Global positioning system information (PSG) in wireless ad hoc networks, which amalgamates the merits of probability-based and location-based flooding algorithms. PSG eases the broadcast storm problem by reducing the total number of transmissions and does not require hello messages from neighboring nodes, yet achieves better results than Multipoint Relaying Flooding (MPR), a neighbor-knowledge-based flooding scheme, by accurately determining whether subsequent forwarding is advantageous while a node receives a broadcasting message. We also discuss the advantages of a two-phase/second-time algorithm and utilize a simplified topology to further explain and demonstrate the merits of second-time broadcasting. We compare our PSG scheme with the simple flooding scheme, the probabilistic schemes with different pre-assigned probabilities, and the MPR schemes with or without the overhead of hello messages. The simulation results show that our scheme demands fewer forwarding nodes to rebroadcast messages and therefore lowers the total number of transmissions. PSG scales down a large number of collisions and attains high delivery ratios compared to other flooding algorithms.

In ad hoc networks that allow devices to dynamically configure networks via wireless communication, a secure routing protocol is a technology that guarantees the validity of routing with the use of cryptographic authentication. The secure DSR with ID-based sequential aggregate signatures (ISDSR) is a recently introduced secure routing protocol with “cryptographically compact chain,” where each device signs both the routing information and signatures generated by the previous device without increasing the size of signatures and the ID information propagated via packets can be utilized as a public key. However, ISDSR requires communication with a centralized key generation center (KGC), and thus a new device may experience difficulties in joining the protocol. Moreover, the implementation results of ISDSR have not been presented. In this work, we present ISDSR+, a new secure routing protocol without a centralized KGC that uses distributed key generation and the conventional features of ISDSR. ISDSR+ relies on a novel signature scheme where any node can receive a secret key as long as the number of available KGCs is more than a certain threshold. In other words, even if several KGCs are unavailable, the remaining available KGCs can still provide secret keys. We furthermore show promising results of ISDSR+ via a prototype implementation on Raspberry Pis. The results show the computational time of 0.1 s for both the secret key generation and the round trip time (RTT) of routing information under reasonable settings. The RTT of ISDSR+ is better than that of a naive secure routing protocol with RSA signatures.

Reconfigurable wireless networks, such as ad hoc or wireless sensor networks, do not rely on fixed infrastructure. Nodes must cooperate in the multi-hop routing process. This dynamic and open nature make reconfigurable networks vulnerable to routing attacks that could degrade significantly network performance. Intrusion detection systems consist of a set of techniques designed to identify hostile behavior. In this paper, there are several approaches for intrusion detection in reconfigurable network routing such as collaborative, statistical, or machine learning-based techniques. In this paper, we introduce a new approach to intrusion detection for reconfigurable network routing based on linear systems theory. Using this approach, we can discriminate routing attacks by considering the system's z-plane poles. The z-plane can be thought of as a two dimensional feature space that arises naturally. It is independent of the number of network attack detection metrics and does not require extra dimensionality reduction. Two different host-based intrusion detection techniques, inspired by this new linear systems perspective, are presented and analyzed through a case study. The case study considers the effects of attack severity and node mobility to the attack detection performance. High attack detection accuracy was obtained without increasing packet overhead for both techniques by analyzing locally available information.

Fog computing is a disruptive technology in the big data analytics area. Smartphone users and organizations use cellular services, which can support decision-making in disaster scenarios with the data that have been collected. Nevertheless, the regular communication infrastructure can be damaged by disasters. NTT provided an easily deployable solution to construct an emergency communication network (ECN), but ECNs are slow at propagating big data due to their limited transmission capabilities. One major issue is efficiently integrating data processing in the ECN to realize effective data processing and transmission in disaster scenarios. In this paper, we present—a detailed mathematical model to represent data processing and transmission in an ECN fog network; an NP-hard proof for the problem of optimizing the overall delay; and a novel algorithm to minimize the overall delay for wirelessly-networked disaster areas that can be run in real-time. We evaluated the systems across various transmission speeds, processing speeds, and network sizes. We also tested the calculation time, accuracy, and percent age error of the systems. Through evaluation, we found that the proposed disaster area adaptive delay minimization (DAADM) algorithm showed to have a reduced overall delay over various network sizes when compared with some conventional solutions. The proposed DAADM algorithm matched the curve of the genetic algorithm (GA), even if its results did not yield delays as small as the GA. The DAADM had one major advantage over the GA which was the processing time, which allows the DAADM to be implemented in a real-time system, where a GA solution would take far too much time.

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a specialized form of wireless network that is solely intended for collaboration between vehicles. Several studies have shown that standard routing protocols cannot be implemented in VANETs because of their unique characteristics such as their significant count of vehicles on the network and the rapid evolution of the network’s design. Because VANET communication links are broken very frequently, it is necessary to address the routing consistency of these highly dynamic networks. The transmission of VANET data may result in a substantial amount of overhead in the routing process; thus, it is vital to address the issue of overhead to enhance the overall network performance. The proposed protocol named compacted area with effective links (CAEL) is designed to focus on decreasing overhead to achieve an enhancement in PDR performance inside the network. The communication between selected nodes that have been judged to be dependable in terms of geographical location and appropriate existing links between vehicles is focused on achieving this goal. With the inclusion of the reliability factor, it is possible to complete the important step of removing extraneous nodes, with the selection of the trustworthy nodes being made based on the link expiration time during the whole routing procedure. When compared to our previously published protocols, i.e., Dynamic Trilateral Enrollment (DyTE) and Reliable Group of Vehicles (RGoV), the results of the simulations demonstrate that CAEL has achieved an overall improvement in the performance of the network.

Purpose - This paper aims to introduce vehicular network platform, routing and broadcasting methods and vehicular positioning enhancement technology, which are three aspects of the applications of intelligent computing in vehicular networks. From this paper, the role of intelligent algorithm in the field of transportation and the vehicular networks can be understood. Design/methodology/approach - In this paper, the authors introduce three different methods in three layers of vehicle networking, which are data cleaning based on machine learning, routing algorithm based on epidemic model and cooperative localization algorithm based on the connect vehicles. Findings - In Section 2, a novel classification-based framework is proposed to efficiently assess the data quality and screen out the abnormal vehicles in database. In Section 3, the authors can find when traffic conditions varied from free flow to congestion, the number of message copies increased dramatically and the reachability also improved. The error of vehicle positioning is reduced by 35.39% based on the CV-IMM-EKF in Section 4. Finally, it can be concluded that the intelligent computing in the vehicle network system is effective, and it will improve the development of the car networking system. Originality/value - This paper reviews the research of intelligent algorithms in three related areas of vehicle networking. In the field of vehicle networking, these research results are conducive to promoting data processing and algorithm optimization, and it may lay the foundation for the new methods.

This study seeks to conduct analytical investigation into Congestion Control models to determine the effects of parameters inherent in mitigating traffic flow density in a congested network. The spatial temporal variations in the value of λ affects vehicular traffic flow. This study proposed a Congestion Control Model and perform simulation in MATLAB. In this model, vehicular density and number of vehicles were held constant while varying the value of λ from 1 to 10. The simulation result reveals the vehicle trajectories as the value of λ increases with time. The outcome of this study indicates that there is no need increasing the value of λ beyond 12, since further increases would only increase the number of vehicles leading to traffic jam. In principle, it is very important to use 1≤ λ ≤12 in designing traffic models in VANETs. The analytical result proved that the Congestion Control Model for the four-lane may be the most appropriate model to be adopted and use in designing VANETs networks.

In order to meet different data rate and timeliness requirements of different services in aeronautical network communications based on frequency and time-hopping mechanism, a hybrid media access control protocol based on pre-allocation of transmission time slots and immediate access is proposed. It is based on network capacity simulation analysis of burst service frames, channel immediately access capability is reserved for high-priority service frames, and time slot pre-allocation strategies and network access permissions are designed for middle- and low-priority service frames. Time sensitive demand of high-priority service frames is guaranteed, and transmission of middle- and low-priority service frames to the greatest extent is ensured at the same time. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the protocol.

In cognitive radio ad hoc networks (CRAHNs), the secondary users' links are interrupted by the arrival of primary users, which leads to a significant increase of the number of transmissions per packet. Since network coding and opportunistic routing can reduce the number of transmissions over unreliable wireless links, they are more suitable for CRAHNs. Network coding-based opportunistic routing has been well studied in previous works for traditional ad hoc networks. However, existing approaches have limitations to handle CRAHNs. First, the routing decisions of these methods aim to find one optimal forwarding set for the whole path from the source to the destination. If the channel conditions change dynamically, the pre-selected forwarding set may become unavailable or non-optimal. Second, their coding schemes are not efficient enough to cope with the dynamic spectrum variation in CRAHNs. In this paper, we attempt to overcome these limitations and propose a network-coding-based geographic segmented opportunistic routing scheme for CRAHNs, by fully embracing its characteristics. In our scheme, the whole path from the source to the destination is cut down into several smaller opportunistic route segments, where the packets are transmitted through multiple segments based on a step-by-step forwarding procedure until all the packets are delivered to the destination. Since our scheme utilizes only local spectrum opportunities, topology information, and geometric conditions to compute the forwarding set for each short-term opportunistic route segment, it can better adapt to dynamic spectrum environments and changing network topologies in CRAHNs. Furthermore, we construct a coding graph to show that our coding problem is a reduction from the maximum clique problem, and we propose an efficient network coding strategy to solve it. Simulation results show that our scheme can achieve a considerable performance, compared with the latest opportunistic routing protocols designed for CRAHNs.

Ad-hoc networks have long been studied as an ideal technology to provide communications in emergency operations when network infrastructures are not available. Nevertheless, this area has not yet delivered enough mature technologies or working prototypes. We suspect that, among other issues, this is due to a lack of understanding of this application domain that forces researchers to make too many assumptions. One of those concerns is the mobility of network nodes. This paper describes, analyzes, and simulates the mobility traces of a fire department during 30 wildfires. The analysis shows interesting insights into the communication range and the type of network in these scenarios. For instance, multi-hop routes are unlikely, so the network behaves like a delay-tolerant network. In addition, the simulation results present a clear image of the network performance under different circumstances that can be used to design applications. We found that the network capacity is low due to the sparse network connectivity. Moreover, the buffer size has a much bigger impact on data delivery than the delay-tolerant routing protocol selected. We think that these are valuable insights and that the traces constitute an important asset for the research community.

In tactical mobile ad hoc networks, unmanned vehicles such as ground maneuvering nodes or aircraft, are increasingly expected to be exploited for information collection in battlefields or dangerous areas on behalf of soldiers in consideration of their safety. The primary function of this networking system is to conduct military surveillance and reconnaissance through unmanned vehicles, which are teleoperated via a central node by sending command messages in real time. This requires simultaneous network traffic flow in both directions, i.e., uplink and downlink, both of which need to occur in real time with high reliability. In this paper, we propose a novel centralized time-division multiple access (TDMA) protocol to guarantee network reliability and quality of service regarding the bidirectional traffic. We develop a bidirectional-pipelined TDMA (BiPi-TMAC) protocol that consists of three parts: a slot-requesting procedure with bandwidth requirement, a depth-based pipelined slot allocation algorithm, and multiple MAC queue management for prioritized packet scheduling. We implement and evaluate the proposed scheme through the ns-3 simulator and show that it improves performance in terms of both uplink and downlink traffic.

We introduce AIR, a new ant-based routing protocol for ad hoc wireless networks. AIR incorporates recent technology advances in ad hoc routing protocols, such as ring-based searching and third-party reply, while retaining the characteristics and benefits of ant-based routing protocols, including probabilistic routing tables and pheromone evaporation. In addition, we combine the best features of previous ant-based routing protocols with new features like update ants and two-way route establishment, to further improve performance. We compare the performance of AIR against AODV and DSR using appropriately chosen simulations, the results of which are presented and discussed. We find that AIR is especially useful for ad hoc networks requiring low end-to-end delay where mobility rates are high.

Abstract The scheduling algorithm is a fundamental design problem to allocate resources amongst different entities in distributive wireless sensor networks (WSNs). These sensor nodes have limited power and non-replenishable energy resources. In WSNs, the duty cycling mechanism is commonly used to save energy due to idle listening. On the other hand, a fixed duty cycling mechanism increases transmission latency in WSNs. Therefore, in order to ensure the prolonged network-life of WSNs, the medium access control (MAC) protocol should be tackled in an efficient manner to improve energy efficiency by minimizing idle listening, maximizing sleep duration, and eliminating data collision. This paper proposes a practical Adaptive Sleep Efficient Hybrid Medium Access Control (AEH-MAC) algorithm in which the key idea is to dynamically adjust nodes’ sleep time to improve the scheduling in WSNs. The AEH-MAC allows nodes to adjust sleep time dynamically according to the traffic load and coordinate wakeup time with neighbour nodes. A series of short taken packets are transmitted to wake the receiver, and a prediction field is introduced in the ACK packets (GRANT/RELEASE) to reduce the waiting time of the source node. In the proposed algorithm, each node maps a conflict-free time slot for itself up to two-hop neighbouring nodes. The simulation results show that the AEH-MAC algorithm achieves high performance in terms of runtime, number of rounds, energy consumption, and slot reservation.

Abstract Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technologies have been shown to potentially improve the performance of network. Many traditional medium access control (MAC) protocols, such as spatial time division multiple access (STDMA), may not support MIMO technologies directly and not make full use of the feature of MIMO, which may be a limitation in the practical application in ad hoc networks. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a dynamic time slot allocation and stream control for MIMO STDMA (DTSMS) protocol to improve STDMA in performance. Utilizing stream control technology of MIMO and reservation scheme, DTSMS makes improvement on network throughput and avoids the mutual interference of neighbor links. Thus, DTSMS can support both unicast and multicast simultaneously. Moreover, we implement the dynamic time slot allocation scheme in DTSMS to guarantee the transmission efficiency of packets with high cross-layer transmission parameters, such as the packet priority, neighbor node density, or link quality. Utilizing the collected cross-layer information, the proposed scheme allocates time slots for all nodes dynamically according to the changes of network topology and nodes’ transmission parameters. Finally, the effectiveness of the protocol is demonstrated by numerical analysis and simulations. The results show that DTSMS outperforms STDMA in terms of network throughput and delay. Furthermore, compared to our previous TTS-MIMO, DTSMS can decrease the delay of packets with high transmission parameters and improve the quality of service (QoS).

The messages in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) are vulnerable to attack in the open wireless environment. Group communication in VANET is receiving more attention, which confronts many security issues. First, only users who have passed legal authentication can communicate in the group. The ring signature is an effective solution. In addition, the group membership in the vehicular self-organising network changes rapidly, which leads to dynamic adjustment of group members. It is necessary to consider the computing power and communication capability of each node in the group members. To speed up the authentication process, a roadside unit with more computing power and communication capability than vehicles is selected as the signature agent, which effectively reduces the computational load of vehicles and accelerates the communication throughput. Meanwhile, the computational task and communication overhead have not been well-solved. To address these issues, this paper proposed an efficient proxy ring signature scheme for VANET to achieve higher signature efficiency and lower transmission overhead. The scheme allows both privacy protection and original signer tracing. Security analysis shows that the proposed scheme meets the security requirements of VANET.

LoRa is a long-range and low-power radio technology largely employed in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios. It defines the lower physical layer while other protocols, such as LoRaWAN, define the upper layers of the network. A LoRaWAN network assumes a star topology where each of the nodes communicates with multiple gateways which, in turn, forward the collected data to a network server. The main LoRaWAN characteristic is the central role of the gateways; however, in some application scenarios, a much lighter protocol stack, relying only on node capabilities and without the presence of gateways, can be more suitable. In this paper, we present a preliminary study for realizing a LoRa-based mesh network, not relying on LoRaWAN, that implements a peer-to-peer communication between nodes, without the use of gateways, and extends node reachability through multi-hop communication. To validate our investigations, we present a hardware/software prototype based on low-power-consumption devices, and we preliminarily assess the proposed solution.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used in our modern society and their development is rapidly accelerating. Flying Ad Hoc Networks (FANETs) have opened a new window of opportunity to create new value-added services. However, the characteristics that make FANETs unique, such as node mobility, node distance, energy constraints, etc., imply that several guidelines need to be considered for their successful deployment. Although numerous routing protocols have been proposed for FANETs, due to the wide range of applications in which FANETs can be applied, not all routing protocols can be used. Due to this challenge, after breaking down and classifying the different types of existing routing protocols for FANET, this paper analyzes and compares the performance of several routing protocols (Babel, BATMAN-ADV, and OLSR) in terms of throughput and packet loss in a real deployment composed of several UAV nodes using 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi networks. The results show that Babel achieves better performance in the studied metrics than OLSR and BATMAN-ADV, while BATMAN-ADV delivers significantly lower performance. This experimental study confirms the importance of choosing the proper routing protocol for FANETs and their performance evaluation, something that will be extremely important in a few years when this type of network will be common in our day-to-day life.

Content-centric networking (CCN) introduces a paradigm shift from a host centric to an information centric communication model for future Internet architectures. It supports the retrieval of a particular content regardless of the physical location of the content. Content caching and content delivery networks are the most popular approaches to deal with the inherent issues of content delivery on the Internet that are caused by its design. Moreover, intermittently connected mobile environments or disruptive networks present a significant challenge to CCN deployment. In this paper, we consider the possibility of using mobile users in improving the efficiency of content delivery. Mobile users are producing a significant fraction of the total Internet traffic, and modern mobile devices have enough storage to cache the downloaded content that may interest other mobile users for a short period too. We present an analytical model of the CCN framework that integrates a delay tolerant networking architecture into the native CCN, and we present large-scale simulation results. Caching on mobile devices can improve the content retrieval time by more than 50%, while the fraction of the requests that are delivered from other mobile devices can be more than 75% in many cases.