Abstract: Aiming at the problem that the periodic of neighbor detection of the optimized link state routing (OLSR) protocol is fixed in the airborne network for aeronautic swarm, the nodes are unable to detect their neighbor distribution timely which leads to the lack of reliability of routing. An adaptive neighbor detection method of software-defined airborne network for aeronautic swarm is proposed. Firstly, based on existing software defined networking (SDN) architecture, an airborne network architecture for aeronautic swarm is proposed and network model is designed. Secondly, the selection algorithm of set of nodes to be adjusted is designed. The node moving distance is used as a criterion to filter the set of nodes to be adjusted. Finally, the neighbor detection period allocation algorithm is designed to assign the neighbor detection period to the node to be adjusted. Through SDN centralized and efficient adjustment of the neighbor detection period of the node, timely and effective detection for neighbors is realized. Simulation shows this method can obtain neighbor distribution in time, improve packet arrival rate, reduce average end-to-end delay and protocol control overhead, and enhance the reliability of OLSR protocol in the airborne network for aeronautic swarm.

Key words: aeronautic swarm, airborne network, optimized link state routing (OLSR), adaptive, software defined networking (SDN), neighbor detection