Defending Against Periodic Jamming: A Routing Protocol for UAV Networks with Neighborhood Collaboration

Abstract

In adversarial electromagnetic environments, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ad hoc networks are highly susceptible to periodic jamming. Because links are repeatedly disrupted and restored, periodic jamming is more challenging than continuous jamming: link-state protocols such as Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) may use an unavailable node or repeatedly switch routes. This article presents the Neighborhood Collaboration-based Link-State Routing Protocol (NCLSR). NCLSR carries time-aligned missing reports in HELLO messages, cross-validates them to identify disturbed nodes, and uses adaptive routing to avoid repeated selection of such nodes while preserving fallback connectivity. We implement and evaluate NCLSR on EXata, considering different jamming periods, UAV speeds, and sparse random topologies. NCLSR achieves higher delivery ratio and lower jitter with reasonable control overhead, and remains operational without routing collapse in sparse random topologies.