A Simulator for FANETs Using 5G Vehicle-to-Everything Communications and Named-Data Networking
José Manuel Rúa-Estévez, Alicia Meleiro-Estévez, Pablo Fondo-Ferreiro, Felipe Gil-Castiñeira, Brais Sánchez-Rama, Lois Gomez-Gonzalez
TL;DR
The paper addresses validating FANETs under realistic mobility and 5G V2X conditions by introducing a ns-3-based simulator integrated with the Zenoh NDN protocol. It models UAV and GCS nodes as virtual machines running NDN/app stacks connected through TUN/TAP, using 5G-LENA NR V2X sidelink for direct multi-hop communication and a VXLAN overlay to ensure proper session discovery across subnets. The approach supports data-centric publish-subscribe via NDN, enabling performance analysis (throughput, latency, jitter) and routing evaluations in dynamic FANET topologies. The work yields a portable, laptop-friendly demonstrator suitable for validating protocols, routing strategies, and multi-hop NDN communications in realistic FANET scenarios.
Abstract
This work presents a simulator designed for the validation, evaluation, and demonstration of flying adhoc networks (FANETs) using 5G vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications and the named-data networking (NDN) paradigm. The simulator integrates the ns-3 network simulator and the Zenoh NDN protocol, enabling realistic testing of applications that involve the multi-hop communication among multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).