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Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are a remarkably capable technology, and their untold potential scales greatly when multiple units work towards a common objective. However, current wireless and networking architectures limit the capabilities and applications of using multiple UAS primarily to pre-programmed routines – suppressing the advantages of multiple unmanned and autonomous platforms. Ad-hoc communications can unlock the true potential of unmanned and autonomous systems by enabling efficient and direct peer-to-peer data exchange and removing the system’s reliance on infrastructure – enabling them to operate anywhere. Unfortunately, ad-hoc communication is poorly supported by current wireless hardware and standards which are designed for maximized throughput and minimal latency over point-to-point links at the cost of much worse throughput and latency over multicast channels. Attempts to integrate multi-radio and cognitive radio technologies into the wireless ecosystem to increase device inter-connectivity have faced many difficulties because coordinating network resources and implementing a routing algorithm that can take all the involved variables into consideration is a very difficult task in host-centric networking. Our research uses Named Data Networking (NDN), a data-centric Internet architecture that uniquely identifies and retrieves data by name directly, to grant individual nodes the capability to make practical forwarding decisions without the added overhead of complex and centralized routing and coordination algorithms. Each node receives and gathers network information which then enables it to perform intelligent per-hop forwarding decisions toward names that identify data instead of addresses that identify hosts. By understanding what kind of data the node is handling, the requirements to successfully deliver that data, and its standing among other nodes, it can concurrently send data across multiple data-specific channels and radios to ensure quick, reliable, and non-interfering delivery. This will allow the network to effectively utilize the resources available to it and scale rapidly.
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