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1. Introduction
Fly ad hoc networks (FANETs) can be described as a new form of mobile ad hoc network (MANET) in which the nodes are defined as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) (Campanile et al., 2013). The UAVs’ communication must rely on the ad hoc network between the UAVs system (Mukherjee et al., 2018). Several benefits of FANETs can be mentioned, like searching in high-risk areas, destruction operations, border surveillance, fire management, surveillance, accident measurement, remote sensing and traffic monitoring (Sang et al., 2020). Single UAVs have been used for many years, but, nevertheless, there are many benefits in using a small UAV group instead of expanding and launching one single large one (Cevik et al., 2013). One of the most prominent problems is their communication in small groups. Compared with UAVs size, the small size is proven to be particularly beneficial in civilian applications due to various advantages: the purchase price and maintenance and repair expenses are lower (Siebert and Teizer, 2014). Furthermore, they are simpler to construct and run.
Multicluster FANETs can communicate across a broader region, while single cluster networks cover only a small area (Wheeb et al., 2022). This type of topology can bring lower costs and optimize the overall network performance (Nor and Mohamed, 2019). The limited energy of UAVs in large networks is an important issue for the researchers, so transmitting the data directly to base station (BS) leads to network inefficiency (Brik et al., 2020). In such scenarios, the whole network is divided into several clusters, each cluster having a cluster head (CH) (Sefati and Tabrizi, 2021a, 2021b). These CHs are selected from the members of the UAVs, and other remaining members are associated with it. The UAV sends their data to a local CH in each cluster, then this CH processes and aggregates the data from all the other UAVs and sends it to the BS (Okcu and Soyturk, 2014). Clustering in FANET involves efficient grouping of UAVs into separate clusters; each UAV belongs to only one group and communicates only with its own CH (Wheeb et al., 2022). The CH can communicate directly with the BS or multistage through other intermediate CH-UAVs with the BS.
In multicluster FANET context, this...