Improving Energy Consumption in Q-Learning based Routing Protocol for Flying Ad-hoc Networks (FANETs)
Authors:-Devashri Anwekar,Vikas Sakalle
Abstract-The aviation technology known as Flying Ad-hoc Networks (FANETs) demonstrates potential for disaster response scenarios and border safety operations and agricultural observation tasks. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) encounter major obstacles in their routing protocols because of their fluctuating topology design along with their continually moving position and their constrained energy capacity. A new Q-Learning routing protocol enhances FANET energy efficiency by applying an advanced reward system which maintains packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay alongside network operational duration. The proposed framework adopts an energy-conscious reward structure in Q-Learning combined with state variables for tracking UAV energy reservoirs and connection range together with connection stability indicators. The simulation results prove that our proposed routing protocol offers reduced energy usage by 27% against present Q-Learning mechanisms alongside increased network operation span to 32%. The protocol maintains high performance in both packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay measurements which makes it ready for energy-efficient FANET implementations.
