Landmark routing in large wireless battlefield networks using UAVs

In the future automated battle field communications will be supported in part by a hierarchical wireless network that includes: ad hoc ground radio subnets; point to point wireless long haul backbone, and; unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In such a hierarchical network, nodes are generally partitioned into groups. Each group has one or more backbone nodes that provide access points to the backbone network and to UAVs. Communications between groups can thus utilize links at higher level. A critical protocol in the operation of such a large mobile network is routing. Previous research of UAV based systems has generally assumed the use of a hierarchical routing scheme, for example, extended hierarchical state routing (EHSR). However, a hierarchical scheme like EHSR has some limitations. In this paper, we extend landmark ad hoc routing (LANMAR) to a hierarchical structure with backbone nodes, high quality backbone links and UAVs. We show that the basic LANMAR scheme can be extended to incorporate backbone and UAV links. We will also show how backbone links and UAV links are automatically discovered by the LANMAR routing algorithm and are used effectively to reach remote destinations (thus reducing the hop distance). In other words, our scheme will combine the benefits of "flat" LANMAR routing and physical network hierarchy, without suffering of the intrinsic EHSR limitations.