WIP: Federated Learning for Routing in Swarm Based Distributed Multi-Hop Networks

Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are a rapidly emerging technology offering fast and cost-effective solutions for many areas, including public safety, surveillance, and wireless networks. However, due to the highly dynamic network topology of UAVs, traditional mesh networking protocols, such as the Better Approach to Mobile Ad-hoc Networking (B.A.T.M.A.N.), are unsuitable. To this end, we investigate modifying the B.A.T.M.A.N. routing protocol with a ML model and propose implementing this solution using federated learning (FL). This work aims to aid the routing protocol to learn to predict future network topologies and preemptively make routing decisions to minimize network congestion. We also present an FL testbed built on a network emulator for future testing of the proposed ML aided B.A.T.M.A.N. routing protocol.