Three-phased clustered topology formation for Aeronautical Ad-Hoc Networks

In-Flight Internet Connectivity (IFC) has become one of the crucial needs of passengers with technological improvements. The Aeronautical Ad-hoc Networks (AANETs) have been proposed by establishing air-to-air (A2A) links between aircraft to satisfy this need. However, the unstructured aircraft topology caused by their ultra-dynamic characteristics reduces the longevity of A2A links in AANET. This shorter longevity decreases the stability of AANET by accelerating the connection establishment/termination procedures between aircraft. Additionally, the shorter link longevity affects the packet transfer delay and the delivery ratio of AANET. To the best of our knowledge, these three challenges are not investigated simultaneously under one topology management model. This paper proposes a three-phased topology formation model for AANETs to increase the stability and packet delivery ratio in AANET with a shorter packet transfer delay. The first phase corresponds to the aircraft clustering formation, and here, we aim to increase the AANET stability by creating spatially correlated clusters. The second phase consists of the A2A link determination for reducing the packet transfer delay. Finally, the cluster head selection increases the packet delivery ratio in AANET. According to our simulations, we see that the stability and packet delivery ratio of AANET topology are roughly improved 35% and 31% with a 28% delay reduction compared to the methods in the literature. (C) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.