Cross Layer Method of Reliable Transmission

in UAV Ad Hoc Network Based on Improved

Ant Colony Algorithm

Xin Zhang(B) , Zhijun Liu, and Mingfei Qu

College of Aeronautical Engineering, Beijing Polytechnic, Beijing 100176, China

[email protected]

Abstract. In order to improve the quality of communication between UAVs, a

cross layer reliable transmission method based on improved ant colony algorithm is
proposed in this study. According to the free space attenuation model, the threshold
of signal strength for receiving messages from neighbor nodes is defined. Then, the
improved ant colony algorithm is used to calculate the path stability between the
source node and the destination node, so as to perceive the stability of the reliable
transmission path of UAV ad hoc network. The running speed of the buffer area
is calculated according to the cache queue length of UAV ad hoc network, and
the congestion in the transmission process is detected. Finally, through the energy
consumption and transmission balance mechanism, improve the routing process
of data transmission between UAV formations to achieve reliable transmission
of UAV ad hoc networks. The experimental results show that this method can
effectively reduce the transmission outage probability. With the increase of data
transmission rate and UAV speed, lower average delay and higher delivery success
rate can be obtained.

Keywords: Improved Ant Colony Algorithm · UAV Ad Hoc Network · Reliable

Transmission · Communication Protocol · Cross Layer Method

1 Introduction
At present, the application of UAV has covered many fields such as civil, industrial pro-
duction and military. Moreover, UAVs have become an indispensable and important part
of modern warfare. They are mainly used for tasks such as reconnaissance and surveil-
lance, intelligence collection, communication relay, and rapid strike on the battlefield.
The modern battlefield has the characteristics of high confrontation, wide coverage, and
large amount of information [1].
When multiple UAV formations perform tasks cooperatively, they can exchange
mission planning, flight status, intelligence information and other data with each other
through UAV self-organization network to improve UAV formation’s perception of real-
time situation and achieve the overall effectiveness of multiple UAVs performing tasks
independently. In UAV self-organization network, each UAV is treated as a node [2].

© ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2024
Published by Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024. All Rights Reserved
B. Wang et al. (Eds.): ICMTEL 2023, LNICST 532, pp. 235–247, 2024.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50571-3_17
236 X. Zhang et al.

Reference [3] proposed a multiple access control (MAC) protocol supporting mixed
service transmission. Aiming at the QoS requirements of mixed services, the protocol
adopts multi-channel random access strategy for the highest priority services, and multi-
channel free busy access strategy for the remaining priorities. It controls the access rights
of non timeout packets in real time according to the threshold and channel occupancy,
and provides QoS guarantee capability for each priority service through a multi priority
backoff mechanism based on channel free busy awareness. Reference [4] proposes a
multi priority single threshold access control (MSAC) protocol. By designing a channel
load statistics time correction mechanism and a channel access control mechanism based
on a single threshold, more accurate channel load statistics and load control based on
data packets can be achieved, so that the system channel carrying capacity matches the
actual channel load and maximizes the use of channel resources. Reference [5] proposed
a cross layer optimization technology for using multiple description coding (MDC) to
improve the QoS of video streaming applications in multi radio wireless mesh networks
(WMN). WMN is an emerging technology used to connect various types of networks to
the Internet.
With the development of science and technology, the use of UAVs has evolved
from the initial single-machine mission to the formation of multiple UAVs to complete
tasks collaboratively. Due to the dynamic characteristics of UAV formation, the rapid
changes in network topology, the rapid changes in the wireless channel environment,
and the scarcity of network bandwidth have caused the traditional layered architecture to
encounter new difficulties and challenges in improving network performance. Optimiza-
tion provides a broad space. Introducing a cross-layer design to optimize UAV network
architecture, while maintaining the separation between layers, it allows the protocols of
different layers to share the state information of the network, which is conducive to the
optimization of intra-layer and inter-layer operations, and achieves effective allocation
of network resources. Improve the comprehensive performance of UAV self-organizing
network.
Based on the above research background, this paper uses the improved ant colony
algorithm to design a cross layer method for the reliable transmission of UAV ad hoc
network, so as to meet the quality requirements of communication between UAVs. The
general research ideas are as follows:
(1) According to the free space attenuation model, the threshold value of signal strength
for receiving messages from neighboring nodes is defined.
(2) The improved ant colony algorithm is used to calculate the path stability between
the source node and the destination node in the ad hoc network.
(3) The running speed of the cache area is calculated according to the length of the
cache queue in the ad hoc network, and the congestion in the transmission process
is detected.
(4) Through the energy consumption and transmission balance mechanism, the data
transmission route selection process is optimized to achieve reliable transmission of
UAV in the ad hoc network.
 Cross Layer Method of Reliable Transmission in UAV Ad Hoc Network 237

2 Design of Cross-Layer Method for Reliable Transmission of UAV

Ad Hoc Network
2.1 Perceive the Stability of the Reliable Transmission Path of UAV Ad Hoc
Network
In UAV ad hoc network, due to the rapid movement speed of UAV and the different task
allocation of each UAV, the network topology changes rapidly, and the phenomenon
of link interruption is very common. Therefore, in order to avoid the degradation of
network performance caused by link interruption, a link stability evaluation method
is proposed. It can not only comprehensively evaluate the stability of a link, but also
predict and delete the links that may be interrupted in advance by receiving the signal
strength of Hello messages and establishing a long-term monitoring mechanism for them
[6], which overcomes the shortcomings of previous methods and improves the network
performance. At the same time, in order to avoid the impact of GPS positioning error or
external interference on the method, this paper does not use the location information of
nodes.
In the reconnaissance process of UAV formation on the battlefield environment, due
to the different needs of the mission, the formation is often composed of different types
of UAVs, so the speed, antenna gain and maximum transmission power of each platform
are different. Therefore, this paper improves the data packet of Hello message, including
source node address, node congestion, antenna gain, transmission power, and moving
speed.
According to the free space attenuation model, the signal strength pri of the Hello
message received by the current node from the neighbor node i at distance d is:
 γ 2
pri = pt gt gr (1)
4π d
where, γ is the wavelength of the radio wave, gr is the gain of the receiving antenna, gt
is the gain of the transmitting antenna, and pt is the Hello message transmission power
of the neighbor node.
Assume that the coverage of the antenna is a circular area of radius r. In a circular
area of radius r, the average distance between two mobile nodes is 0.905 4r. Therefore,
this paper defines the critical value of signal strength for receiving Hello messages from
neighbor nodes as:
 γ 2
pl = pt gt gr (2)
4π · 0.9054r
The current node can calculate the critical value of the received signal strength
according to the known information of the node and the information contained in the
Hello message of the neighbor node, and compare it with the measured signal strength
to evaluate the stability of the reliable transmission link of UAV ad hoc network for the
first time. The process is as follows:
⎧
⎨ 0, pri pl
Ki = pl (3)
⎩1 − , pri > pl
pri
238 X. Zhang et al.

The value of Ki represents the stability of the reliable transmission link of the i UAV
ad hoc network at the current moment. The larger the value of Ki , the better the stability
of the link, but it does not exceed 1. When Ki is 0, the link is identified as an unstable
UAV ad hoc network reliable transmission link, and is deleted from the storage area. In
order to maintain the real-time nature of the Ki value, it needs to be updated continuously,
and the update time interval T is:
r − 0.9054r
T= (4)
v1 + v2
where, v1 is the maximum moving speed of the current node, and v2 is the maximum
moving speed of the neighbor node. Because the types of neighbor nodes are different, the
corresponding T is also different. By using this time interval to update the Ki value, it can
ensure that no neighbor node in the storage area has moved out of its communication
range within time T . It effectively uses the storage space of the node and provides a
reliable choice for the route discovery phase. It effectively solves the defect of fixed
Hello message cycle.
The above process only evaluates the stability of the reliable transmission link of
UAV ad hoc network at a certain moment, and does not establish a long-term mechanism
to comprehensively evaluate the stability of the reliable transmission link of UAV ad hoc
network. Therefore, this paper estimates the mobility of neighbor nodes according to
the changes of the Hello message signal strength at different times [7], and deletes the
neighbor nodes with strong mobility in the storage area of the current node.
According to the above process, Biannemei-Chebyshev inequality can be obtained:
μ(X )
p{|X − E(X )| < φ}1 − (5)
φ2
where, X is a discrete variable, E(X ) is the mathematical expectation of X , μ(X ) is the
variance of X , and φ is any positive number.
When μ(X ) = 0, there is p{|X − E(X )| < φ} = 1, which means that the variable
X is equal to its expected value, and it also means that the smaller the variance of the
variable X is, the closer the variable X is to its expectation, and the smaller the variation
of the variable X is.
According to multiple measurements of variable X , its variance μ(X ) can be obtained
as follows:
  2
 X2  Xk
μ(X ) = k
− (6)
N N

Taking the value of Ki at different times as the measured value of variable X multiple
times, and substituting it into formula (6), we can get:
 n  n 2
 Ki (X )2  Ki (X )
var(Ki ) = − (7)
N N
i=1 i=1

The mobility of a neighbor node can be obtained by formula (7). The smaller the
value of var(Ki ), the less obvious the neighbor node’s movement is, and the more stable
 Cross Layer Method of Reliable Transmission in UAV Ad Hoc Network 239

the i link is. This method only judges the mobility of neighbor nodes in the current
node’s storage area.
To sum up, the specific process of judging the stability of the reliable transmission
link of UAV ad hoc network is as follows: each node numbers the neighboring nodes that
enter the scope of this node 0.9054r, and writes them into the storage area, and according
to the formula (3), calculate the stability Ki of each link at the current moment. When
the Ki value of a link is 0, the storage area will delete the link. When a link obtains two
consecutive Ki s that are not 0, the node mobility of the link is judged, and as long as Ki
is not 0, the node mobility of the link is always judged.When var(Ki ) of a link exceeds
the preset threshold value varl three times, it indicates that the neighbor node has strong
mobility, and it also indicates that the link is unstable. Therefore, the link is deleted from
the storage area of the current node. At the same time, in order to save storage space,
this paper defines that only the Ki values of the last five moments are stored in the node
storage area.
In the route discovery stage, it is usually necessary to select the most stable route
to transmit data, so it is necessary to comprehensively quantify the stability of a current
link. This paper proposes a comprehensive quantification method for the stability of a
current link, as follows:
Ki (tm )
Qi (tm ) = (8)
evarm (Ki )
where, Qi (tm ) is the comprehensive stability of the i link at time tm , Ki (tm ) is the Ki
value at time tm , and varm (Ki ) is the var(Ki ) value at time tm . At this moment, when a
neighbor node enters the storage area of the current node for the first time, the value of
var(Ki ) is empty. In this method, let varm (Ki ) = 1 at this moment. Moreover, the larger
the Qi (tm ) value, the higher the comprehensive stability of the reliable transmission link
of UAV ad hoc network.
Each routing control packet contains a value of W . The source node sends a forward
ant and sets the initial value of W to 1. When the forward ant moves in the network,
every time it passes an intermediate node, it multiplies the link stability Qi between the
intermediate node and the previous hop node by the current W value [8] to get a new
W value. When the ant reaches the destination node, the stability of the path from the
source node to the destination node can be obtained:
n
j
W = Qi (9)
j=1

j
In the formula, Qi is the stability of each link passed by the forward ants in the route
discovery process, and n is the number of nodes passed by the forward ants.

2.2 Congestion Detection in Reliable Transmission Process of UAV Ad Hoc

Network

In the process of information transmission, although UAV will continuously send the
transmitted data information to its next hop UAV, UAV will also continuously receive
240 X. Zhang et al.

the transmitted data information from the previous hop UAV. When the overall rate at
which the drone receives data information is much higher than the rate at which it is sent,
the load on the nodes increases, which will cause congestion on the transmission path.
By detecting the length of UAV’s cache queue, the speed at which its cache area is fully
loaded is calculated [9].When the speed of UAV cache reaches full load is positive, and
the faster the speed is, the easier it is for UAV cache to overflow, the more likely it is to
cause congestion, and the higher the congestion degree of UAV; The slower the speed is,
the lower the congestion of UAV; When the cache reaches full load at a negative speed,
it means that the current available cache space of UAV is larger and no congestion will
occur.
Use Lall to represent the length of the buffer area, L0 to represent the length of the
buffer queue at the current moment, and there must be Lall ≥ L0 . When Lall = L0 , the
buffer area is full and congestion occurs. According to the DropTail principle, the data
packets that arrive later will be discarded. Therefore, to avoid this situation, it is detected
in advance that the buffer area is about to be full, and the This status information is fed
back to the source drone to control the rate at which the source drone sends data packets.
When Lall > L0 , the buffer area is not full. The input rate in and output rate out
D of a UAV data packet can be obtained through the time information provided by the
MAC layer. The calculation formula is:
1
in = (10)
Tin
1
out = (11)
Tout
Among them, Tin is the time interval between the arrival of two adjacent data packets,
and Tout is the time interval from when the data packet is ready to be transmitted to when
ACK packet is received to confirm the successful reception, including processes such as
contention, backoff waiting, data transmission, and collision retransmission.
Tin and Tout need the time information recorded by the MAC layer and get it through
calculation, but the data transmission is random. If the result is recorded only once, it is
obviously not convincing. Therefore, the weighted iterative average method is used to
reduce the error caused by the randomness of data transmission. The specific method is
as follows:

Tin (n) = σ Tin (n − 1) + (1 − σ )[tin (n) − tin (n − 1)] (12)

Tout (m) = ς Tout (m − 1) + (1 − ς ) tsck (m) − tready (m) (13)

where, Tin (n) and Tin (n − 1) are the average time interval between the arrival of the
second data packet calculated by weighted average when the n and n − 1 data packets
arrive at UAV respectively, Tout (m) and Tout (m − 1) represent the average processing
time calculated by weighted average when the m and m − 1 data packets arrive at
UAV successfully from the time they are ready to be transmitted to the next hop, and
[tin (n) − tin (n − 1)] represents the actual recorded time interval between the n and n − 1
data packets arriving at UAV, tsck (m) − tready (m) is the m data packet actually recorded.
 Cross Layer Method of Reliable Transmission in UAV Ad Hoc Network 241

It is the processing time from the time when it is ready to be transmitted to the time
when it is successfully received by the next hop UAV. σ and ς are weight coefficients.
In order to reduce the measurement error, σ = ς = 0.2 is taken in this paper.
In the process of data transmission, there may be no data transmission for a long time
or due to congestion, which will cause Tin (n) and Tout (m) to approach infinity, which
is not expected. Therefore, it is necessary to eliminate the infinite values in Tin (n) and
Tout (m). , reducing the error, the detection value ϑ can be expressed as:

tin (n) − tin (n − 1)

ϑ1 = (14)
Etin
ttck (m) − tready (m − 1)
ϑ2 = (15)
Etout
where, Etin is the expected time interval between two adjacent data packets arriving at
UAV, and Etout is the expected processing time from the time when they are ready to
be transmitted to the time when they are successfully received by the next hop UAV.
Therefore, dividing the actual value by the expected value can determine whether there
is no data transmission for a long time or transmission failure due to congestion.

2.3 Realization of Reliable Transmission Across Layers of UAV Ad Hoc Network

In view of the large amount of data transmission between UAVs, only the adaptive power
control mechanism cannot guarantee the reliable transmission of data. It is necessary
to reasonably select the route of data transmission according to the status of the data
link. The following is an analysis of routing selection from the perspectives of energy
consumption and transmission balance to realize cross-layer transmission.
HT represents the energy consumption of UAV i transmitting α-bit data through the
data link, and its expression is:

α × Eelec + α × ∂fs × d 2 , d R
HT = (16)
α × Eelec + α × ∂amp × d 4 , d > R

HR = αEelec (17)

The energy consumption of the source drone is Hs = HT , the energy consumption

of the destination drone is Hd = HR , and the energy consumption Hp of the relay drone
p can be expressed as:

Hp = HR + HT (18)

where, Eelec is the energy loss of transmitting and receiving unit bit information, α is the
number of bits, and d is the distance between two UAVs. The power of electromagnetic
wave will decrease with the increase of the distance between UAVs. Therefore, ∂fs and
∂amp are the power consumption coefficients of power amplification circuits for free
space model and multipath fading model respectively [10].
242 X. Zhang et al.

Every time a drone is passed, an H value will be calculated and recorded in the
routing table of the drone. In the N hop from the source UAV to the destination UAV,
the energy factor of this link can be obtained by the following formula:

Hstd = Hs × Hd × Hn (19)
n∈N −2

Hstd of the above equation is used as the energy based link selection standard. For
multiple links to the same destination UAV, select the link with the lowest Hstd value as
the data transmission link.
Definition Uik represents the transmission factor of data k(k ∈ {A, B, C}) at UAV
i, which is used to describe the load situation at UAV i. MLi represents the maximum
load space at UAV i, and PLik represents the load of UAV i processing data k. where
PLi is jointly determined by UAV i and neighboring UAVs, and its expression can be
expressed as:

PLi = SLi (x) + NLi (20)

SLi (x) = SLi (x − 1) × ξ + SQi × (1 − ξ ) (21)

NLi = SLi+1 (22)

where, SLi (x) represents the current load of UAV i, SLi (x − 1) represents the load of
UAV i at the last moment, SQi represents the MAC layer queue length of current UAV i,
NLi represents the load of UAV i’s neighbor, and also the load of UAV itself at the next
hop, ξ(ξ ∈ [0, 1]) [0, 1]) is the smoothing factor, and ξ is taken as 0.2 in this paper.
If data A is generated at UAV i, the current communication channel is completely
preempted, and other data is not selected to be transmitted through UAV at this time.
Let its transfer factor UA = 1.
The transfer factor of data B can be expressed as:
LiB
UiB = × (1 − UiA ) (23)
Mi

Multiply 1 − UiA after LMiBi to avoid continuing to select this UAV to transmit data
B if data A is generated. UiA = 1 means that data A almost completely occupies UAV i
link. If UiA = 0 means that data A is not generated at UAV i and data B is transmitted
normally.
The total transmission factor UstdB on the link from the source UAV to the destination
UAV can be expressed as:

UstdB = UiB (24)

i∈N

The transfer factor of data C can be expressed as:

PLiC
UiC = × (1 − UiB ) (25)
MLi
 Cross Layer Method of Reliable Transmission in UAV Ad Hoc Network 243

The reason for using this form is similar to that before. If there is no data A and B
transmission at UAV i, then UiA and UiB are equal to 0. The total transmission factor
UstdC on the link from the source UAV to the destination UAV can be expressed as:

UstdC = UiC (26)

i∈N

Ustdk considers the link conditions of data transmission. The smaller the value of
Ustdk is, the smaller the transmission load of the link is. Selecting such a link can avoid
congestion and reduce large delays and high packet loss rates.
Under the adjustment of priority function, the priority of data C is gradually
increased. When the priority of data C is higher than that of data B, only the sub-
scripts of formula (23), (24), (25) and (26) need to be exchanged; When the priority of
data C is cancelled, the subscript can be called back.
The values of U and H are both 0 when no data is sent from the source drone, which
can ensure that the source drone has enough energy and cache to process the message.
To sum up, it can be concluded that the data k(k ∈ (A, B, C)) is transmitted on a
certain link, based on the joint weight expression of energy and transmission balance:

α × e−Hstd + β × e−Ustdk , k ∈ B, C
Wstdk = (27)
α × e−Hs ×Hd + β × e−1 , k ∈ A

In the formula, α and β are the weights of the two determinants, and α + β = 1 is
taken as α = 0.1 and β = 0.9.
An additional area is added in the Hello message to store the U and H values. A
drone loads its U and H values into the Hello message before sending Hello to the next-
hop drone. When the drone receives the Hello message, it takes out the U and H values
in the Hello message to update the routing table, calculates the W value, and selects the
path with the largest W value to transmit data.
Once the distance between two UAVs is less than the safety distance, the data A
with the highest priority will be generated. At this time, the data link between them
is occupied, and the data with low priority cannot be transmitted on this link. For the
transmission of the other two types of data, other links are selected for transmission
according to the updated transmission information of the relevant links, and priority
adjustment function is used to avoid the phenomenon of “starving” of low priority data
and make full use of bandwidth resources.

3 Experimental Comparative Analysis

3.1 Set the Experimental Parameters

Simulate the information transmission of UAV self-organizing network, and set the
simulation scenario that multiple UAVs are distributed in a 50 km x 50 km square area.
Other parameter settings are shown in Table 1.
244 X. Zhang et al.

Table 1. Experimental parameters

Parameter Size Parameter Size

MAC protocol IEEE802.11 RTS threshold/byte 550
Agent type TCP Transmission type FTP
Data packet [64,10000] Channel rate (M/b) 1
SIFS/µs 10 DIFS/µs 50
Antenna type Omnidirectional antenna Interface queue type Drop Tail
UAV flight speed (m/s) 20~70 Communication range 8
Simulation time/s 1000 Number of drones 30

3.2 Analysis of Results

In order to verify the superiority of the method in this paper, the cross-layer method
based on supporting mixed service transmission described in reference [3] and the cross-
layer method based on multi-priority single-threshold access described in reference [4]
are compared. After applying different methods, the performance of break probability
varying with signal noise ratio (SNR) is shown in Fig. 1. It can be seen from Fig. 1
that the outage probability decreases with the increase of the signal-to-noise ratio. The
outage probability of the method in this paper is lower than that of the cross-layer method
based on supporting mixed service transmission and the cross-layer method based on
multi-priority single-threshold access. About 42% and 63%. This is because this method
uses improved ant colony algorithm to perceive the stability of the reliable transmission
path of UAV ad hoc network, selects the communication mode with the best channel

100

10-1

10-2
Outage probability

10-3

10-4
Method in the text
Cross-layer method based on multi-priority
10-5 and single-threshold access
A Cross-Layer Approach Based on Supporting
Hybrid Service Transmission
10-6
0 5 10 15 20 25 30

SNR/dB

Fig. 1. Performance of outage probability as a function of signal-to-noise ratio

 Cross Layer Method of Reliable Transmission in UAV Ad Hoc Network 245

conditions for data transmission, and also uses dynamic congestion detection in advance
in congestion control to effectively reduce interruption.
After applying different methods, the performance change of packet delivery success
rate with connection data transmission rate is shown in Fig. 2. It can be seen from Fig. 2
that the packet delivery success rate of the method in this paper is about 6% and 9% higher
than that of the cross layer method based on supporting mixed service transmission and
the cross layer method based on multi priority single threshold access under the same
conditions.
In this method, congestion is predicted according to the time when packets enter
the cache queue during data transmission, and the sliding window of the source UAV is
controlled in advance to reduce congestion, thus improving the success rate of packet
delivery to a certain extent.

100
Method in the text

Cross-layer method based on multi-

90 priority and single-threshold access

A Cross-Layer Approach Based on

Group delivery success rate/%

Supporting Hybrid Service

80
Transmission

70

60

50

40
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Data transmission rate per connection/(kb/s)

Fig. 2. Performance of packet delivery success rate versus connection data transmission rate

The performance change of packet delivery success rate with the maximum rate
of UAV is shown in Fig. 3. It can be seen from Fig. 3 that with the increase of the
maximum rate of UAV, the possibility of link interruption between UAVs also increases.
The method in this paper is about 7% and 11% higher than the cross layer method
based on supporting mixed service transmission and the cross layer method based on
multi priority single threshold access respectively. This is because in the process of data
transmission, the method in this paper will select a more appropriate data transmission
mode according to the channel conditions, and make congestion prediction, which will
slow down the decline of the packet delivery success rate to a certain extent.
The performance change of average delay with the maximum rate of UAV is shown
in Fig. 4. As can be seen from Fig. 4, with the increase of the maximum speed of UAV,
the average delay of the method in this paper is respectively higher than that of the
cross-layer method based on supporting mixed service transmission and the cross-layer
method based on multi-priority single-threshold access under the same conditions. The
layer method is about 12% and 18% lower.
246 X. Zhang et al.

90

85

Group delivery success rate/%

80

75

70
Method in the text
Cross-layer method based on multi-priority
65
and single-threshold access
A Cross-Layer Approach Based on Supporting
Hybrid Service Transmission
60
20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70
The maximum speed of the drone/(m/s)

Fig. 3. Performance of packet delivery success rate with the maximum rate of UAV

With the increase of the maximum speed of UAV, it is not only necessary to ensure
congestion control during data transmission, but also to minimize the number of link
interruptions so that data can be transmitted quickly. The method in this paper is based
on this idea, taking the interruption and congestion control into account to ensure the
stability of UAV self-organized network communication.

40
Method in the text
Cross-layer method based on multi-priority and
35 single-threshold access
A Cross-Layer Approach Based on Supporting
Hybrid Service Transmission

30
Average delay/ms

25

20

15
20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70
The maximum speed of the drone/(m/s)

Fig. 4. Performance of average delay versus maximum UAV rate

4 Conclusion
In this paper, the improved ant colony algorithm is applied to the design of reliable
transmission cross-layer method of UAV ad hoc network. The improved ant colony
algorithm is used to calculate the path stability between the source node and the desti-
nation node of the ad hoc network. According to the calculation results and the running
 Cross Layer Method of Reliable Transmission in UAV Ad Hoc Network 247

speed of the ad hoc network buffer, the congestion in the transmission process is detected.
Finally, through the energy consumption and transmission balance mechanism, the route
selection process of data transmission between UAV formations is improved to achieve
reliable transmission.
The experimental results show that this method can improve the performance of UAV
ad hoc network to a certain extent and ensure the reliability of communication. However,
there are still areas to be optimized in this study. In the future research, we will consider
the throughput in the data transmission process, optimize cross-layer cooperation, and
improve the network throughput on the basis of ensuring the original delay and delivery
success rate.

Acknowledgement. School level project of Beijing Polytechnic, Project Name: Research on

control system of multi axis unmanned aerial vehicle with constant speed and variable pitch
(CJGX2022-KY-010).

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