Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming important communication infrastructures. One major challenge of communications with UAV networks is the routing protocol design. Due to the inherent characteristics (e.g., dynamic network topology and limited UAV device capabilities), it is difficult to directly apply existing routing protocols that utilize network topology information and routing path explorations. In this article, two novel routing protocols are designed based on random network coding (RNC) for a swarm UAV network, where UAVs operate cooperatively as a swarm, enabling efficient routing process. The first routing protocol utilizes the unique feature of RNC: Original packets can be decoded as long as an UAV accumulates sufficient generations. This property can be used to effectively expedite the underlying routing process. The second routing protocol further improves the efficiency where each forwarding UAV only needs to create a new generation rather than decoding original packets. Accordingly, the duration of each hop can be significantly reduced. Extensive simulations have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the designed routing protocols. The simulation results demonstrate that our designed routing protocols can effectively enhance the performance on both average transmission delay and delay violation probabilities compared to benchmark methods.

中文翻译：

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无人驾驶飞行器网络中的随机网络编码启用路由协议

无人机（UAV）正在成为重要的通信基础设施。与无人机网络通信的一大挑战是路由协议设计。由于固有的特性（例如，动态网络拓扑和有限的无人机设备能力），很难直接应用现有的利用网络拓扑信息和路由路径探索的路由协议。在本文中，基于随机网络编码 (RNC) 为群无人机网络设计了两种新颖的路由协议，其中无人机作为群协作运行，从而实现高效的路由过程。第一个路由协议利用了 RNC 的独特特性：只要无人机积累了足够的代数，就可以解码原始数据包。此属性可用于有效加快底层路由过程。第二种路由协议进一步提高了效率，每个转发的无人机只需要创建新一代而不是解码原始数据包。因此，可以显着减少每一跳的持续时间。已经进行了广泛的模拟来评估设计的路由协议的性能。仿真结果表明，与基准方法相比，我们设计的路由协议可以有效地提高平均传输延迟和延迟违规概率的性能。已经进行了广泛的模拟来评估设计的路由协议的性能。仿真结果表明，与基准方法相比，我们设计的路由协议可以有效地提高平均传输延迟和延迟违规概率的性能。已经进行了广泛的模拟来评估设计的路由协议的性能。仿真结果表明，与基准方法相比，我们设计的路由协议可以有效地提高平均传输延迟和延迟违规概率的性能。