Abstract
The dynamic network topology of Flying Ad hoc Networks (FANETs) leads to challenges during communications. This becomes complicated when dealing with multiple transmission paths and relays. Conventional routing protocols proposed fail to address the dynamic issues inherent in FANETs. This work addresses it by diversifying the selection of relay in order to establish the significance of cooperative diversity technique. Inspiration is taken from bio inspired computing which assists in finding solutions to several challenging tasks. The natural behavior of the different species leads to elevated design concepts of protocols. This paper proposes GW-COOP (Gray Wolf Algorithm using Cooperative Diversity Technique) routing protocol for FANETs. This protocol consists of Gray Wolf Optimizer (GWO) that drives gray wolves' social hierarchy and collaboration technique. First, we opt the design implementation of gray wolves natural posture GWO to handle flying node requirements. Second, we envision the idea of cooperative diversity using two relays to sustain either of the source-to-destination links. The design of protocol is novel in that previously such cooperation techniques are not employed in FANETs. Moreover, the concept of two relays with bio inspired algorithm is first time proposed here. In order to establish the performance of the GW-COOP protocol, this paper compares GW-COOP with two different protocols BAT-COOP (Bat Algorithm using Cooperative Diversity Technique) and BAT-FANETs protocols. The simulation results show that the GW-COOP protocol outperforms BAT-COOP protocol in terms of transmission loss, energy consumption, link delay and packet loss ratio. The results indicate improved GW-COOP performance over BAT-FANET and BAT-COOP. Approximately 67% and 52% reduction is observed in transmission losses compared to BAT-FANET and BAT-COOP respectively. Moreover, a decrease of 61% and 54% in terms of energy consumption, 24% and 9% in terms of link delay, and 58% and 48% reduction in terms of packet loss ratio, is also observed.