| Summary: | The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), organized as a Flying Ad-hoc NETwork (FANET), are used to make effective remote monitoring in diverse applications. Due to their high mobility, their energy consumption is increasingly affected leading to reduced network stability and communication efficiency. The design of node clustering of a FANET needs to consider the number of UAVs in the vicinity (transmission range) in order to ensure an adaptive reliable routing. Novel clustering schemes have been employed to deal with the highly dynamic flying behavior of UAVs and to maintain network stability. In this context, a new clustering algorithm is proposed to address the fast mobility of UAVs and provide safe inter-UAV distance, stable communication and extended network lifetime. The main contributions of this paper are first to extend and improve important metrics used in two well-known algorithms in the literature namely: The Bio-Inspired Clustering Scheme for FANETs (BICSF) and the Energy Aware Link-based Clustering (EALC). Then, exploiting the improved metrics, an Energy and Mobility-aware Stable and Safe Clustering (EMASS) algorithm, built upon new schemes useful for ensuring stability and safety in FANETs, is proposed. The simulation results showed that the EMASS algorithm outperformed the BICSF and the EALC algorithms in terms of better cluster stability, guaranteed safety, higher packet deliverability, improved energy saving and lower delays.
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