Performance Analysis of ICN/NDN Architecture in FANET Networks: Comparative Simulation for Maritime Surveillance.

This paper evaluates the deployment of a Flying Ad-Hoc Network (FANET) composed of three Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) under the Information-Centric Networking / Named Data Networking (ICN/NDN) architecture in maritime surveillance missions of the Brazilian Navy at the Port of Santos. The simulations were conducted in the NS-3 simulator with the ndnSIM extension, over a georeferenced patrol route of 15.9 km flown in line-abreast formation. The performance of ICN/NDN was compared to that of the TCP/IP model with AODV routing through a continuous temporal analysis, evaluating packet delivery ratio, latency, and control overhead. Both architectures operated under an identical physical layer — IEEE 802.11p in the 5.9 GHz band, a 10 MHz channel, and OFDM modulation at 6 Mbps — configuring a paired comparison in which the network stack is the sole experimental variable. The results showed that the information-centric paradigm is not uniformly superior: TCP/IP delivered 98.21% of the packets against 94.71% for ICN/NDN, while ICN/NDN reduced mean latency from 5.30 ms to 2.10 ms and control overhead from 4.58 to 1.06. The most significant difference lies in temporal variability, with a standard deviation of 0.13 ms for ICN/NDN against oscillation between 1 ms and 8 ms for TCP/IP. This reveals a trade-off between delivery reliability and temporal predictability, the latter being the dominant requirement in the critical, real-time operation of FANETs.