A Packet Aggregation and Forwarding Scheme for UAV in Non-Terrestrial Networks
Dist. Prof. Tsang-Ling Sheu
National Sun-Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Abstract: In non-terrestrial networks (NTN), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are responsible for collecting sensor data and performing data forwarding to an LEO (Low-Earth-Orbit) satellite. Yet, since wireless channels are vulnerable and treasured, the overhead in the headers of small-sized packets may lead to unnecessary wastage of wireless bandwidth. On the other hand, in collecting real-time sensor data, since the end-to-end delay is very stringent, to relay data from an LEO satellite to a ground station (GS), finding an adequate UAV becomes very crucial. To address these two issues, in this paper, we propose a data aggregation and forwarding (DAF) scheme for UAV in NTN. DAF consists of two parts, the short packet aggregation (SPA) and the dynamic UAV selection (DUS). In SPA, a UAV collects sensor data of smaller sizes and then aggregates them into a longer-size packet before it forwards the packet to an LEO satellite. In DUS, it aims at minimizing the end-to-end transmission delay for real-time data by selecting the adequate UAV based on its latitude, longitude, and altitude. To analyse the performance of the proposed DAF, we perform a simulation written in C language. From the simulation results, we demonstrate that the proposed DAF can significantly improve the percentage of bandwidth saving and reduce the packet end-to-end delay under different number of sensor nodes and different ratios of small versus long data sizes. Keyword - NTN, UAV, LEO, Sensors, Packet aggregation, Bandwidth, Delay.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Tsang-Ling Sheu received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Penn State University, University Park, USA, in 1989. From Sept. 1989 to July 1995, he worked with IBM Corporation at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. He is currently a full professor at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaoshiung, Taiwan. His research interests include wireless and mobile communication networks, AIoT, and Generative AI. He was the recipient of the 1990 IBM Outstanding Paper Award. Dr. Sheu is a member of the IEEE, and the IEEE Communications Society.