Delay-Tolerant Networking for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Remote Sensing

Labash, Huda; Abdulrahman, Shams; Abidi, Haithem

doi:10.25673/123722

Proceedings of International Conference on Applied Innovation in IT · 2026/03/31 · Vol. 14 · Issue 1 · pp. 1221–1227

Delay-Tolerant Networking for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Remote Sensing

Huda Labash, Shams Abdulrahman, Haithem Kareem Abass and Ali Imam Abidi

📄 Download PDF DOI: 10.25673/123722

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are essential in remote sensing because they are cheap, easily deployed and able to operate in areas where infrastructure is inadequate. Nevertheless, inconsistent connectivity, mobility, and power limitations make it difficult to transmit data reliably. To overcome these issues, this paper introduces a UAV-specific Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) model created to conduct efficient data collection and delivery in sparse and disruption-prone environment. The suggested architecture combines bundle generation (BPv7), energy-responsible buffer control and adaptive redundancy planning as part of a contact-graph routing scheme. The ONE and ns-3 were used to simulate different performance under different number of UAVs, bundle sizes and duty cycles. Experiments indicate that the proposed DTN structure can increase delivery ratio by 20 percent, tail latency by 25 to 30 percent and reduce energy per delivered bit by 12 per cent over Prophet, MaxProp and CGR. These advances suggest that the UAV-based remote sensing can have DTN principles applied to it. The results reveal design considerations in the next generation UAV network, including the inclusion of AI-enhanced routing, blockchain security, and satellite/5G backhaul technologies to optimize the need to deploy a scalable and secure UAV network in disaster management, precision agriculture, and global environmental monitoring.

Keywords

UAV Delay-Tolerant Networking Remote Sensing Routing Energy Efficiency Redundancy Scheduling.

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