Relay Route Planning Based on Connectivity in Airborne Ad Hoc Networks

For the problem of communication support for the aircraft formation mission, the network connectivity is ensured by the way of adding relay nodes. A relay route planning method of airborne ad hoc network is presented. By the spanning tree selection strategy based on connected component and the relay vector connection strategy based on subsequent vector in-degree, the method gets the smallest number of additional relay node routes, then the network topology is connected graph all along the task route time range. The spanning tree selection strategy avoids the number of relay nodes rising caused by the change of Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) between adjacent time periods. According to the subsequent vector in-degree, the relay vector connection strategy connects the most relay vectors into relay routes. Simulation demonstrates that the proposed method can achieve the reuse of relay nodes in time and space. Compared with the traditional algorithm, this method can effectively reduce the number of relay nodes, and achieve the optimization of relay routes.