A Review - Communication Architectures and Routing Protocols of Flying Ad-hoc Network

With advances in electronics, sensors, and communication frameworks, small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have enabled the development of Flying Ad-hoc Networks (FANETs). FANETs consist of multiple UAVs connected in an ad-hoc manner, coordinated to achieve objectives while maintaining self-organizing, decentralized operation without infrastructure. These networks are valuable for disaster management, emergency response, surveillance, and other applications where rapid deployment is critical. However, coordinating multiple UAVs requires appropriate communication architectures and routing protocols to establish reliable communication among highly dynamic flying nodes. This paper reviews communication architectures suitable for FANETs and examines various routing protocols, including static, proactive, reactive, hybrid, geographic, and hierarchical approaches. Open research challenges related to dynamic topology changes, peer-to-peer coordination, and data-centric routing are also discussed.