Delay Aware Multipath Doppler Routing in Aeronautical Ad hoc Networks

Aeronautical ad hoc network (AANET) is a large scale multi-hop wireless mesh network of aircrafts. It is efficient to provide data communications in high density airspace lacking ground infrastructures and could help the pilots to improve the ability of surveillance and situational awareness. However, reliable and efficient routing in AANET is still a great challenge. In this paper, a novel routing algorithm, termed Delay aware Multipath Doppler Routing (DMDR), is presented. It uses a joint metric which integrates relative velocity and expected queueing delay of nodes to select the next node. By minimizing the joint metric, every node selects the stable neighbor and spreads incoming traffic among all possible nodes, avoiding excessive queueing delay during route discovery. The result is an increase in the throughput without packets being unnecessarily dropped. Many simulations are performed and the results verify that the proposed routing algorithm is effective in selecting stable and efficient paths which could meet critical requirements in highly mobile aeronautical communication environments.