An SDN framework for UAV backbone network towards knowledge centric networking

Due to the flying nature of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), it is very attractive to deploy UAV network as aerial base stations, relays or scouters. However, the management of UAV airborne network is not easy due to the following two facts. First, massive information exits in UAV networks including the flight and control information of UAVs, the protocol stack information in the UAV network, the sensing information of UAVs, and the obtained information from ground terminals. Second, the wireless links and network topologies are changing result from the UAV motion. How to manage and utilize the information, deal with the intermittent links, and at the same time maintain a fluid topology therefore become a challenging problem. Software Defined Networking (SDN) could facilitate flexible deployment and management of network, which helps reduce cost, increase availability in networks. Moreover, the SDN controller can fuse and learn from the information of the UAV network itself and gathered by UAVs to make optimal decision intelligently. In this paper, we design a SDN framework for UAV backbone network. In this framework, a monitoring platform is proposed in the SDN controller to effectively manage and analyze the information from UAV networks. Based on the analysis results, a load balancing algorithm is further proposed to maintain a desirable network service. The algorithm considers the power limit of UAV, both global and local dynamic status in the network. Computer simulation validates the proposed framework and algorithms. The reported SDN framework in this paper is scalable to contribute in the development of UAV backbone network towards Knowledge Centric Networking (KCN).