A novel communication protocol design for internet of flying things

In this thesis a new communication protocol, Message Queuing Telemetry Transport Extended (MQTT-XT) is proposed for the Internet of Flying Things (IoFT) network. The main objective of the proposed protocol is to enable UAVs to be considered as part of IoT nodes. The MQTT-XT protocol bridges the gap between UAVs and IoT devices by converting MQTT and MAVLINK message types to make them compatible with each other. Three different client types have been proposed to support long-distance and distributed communication with UAVs and IoT devices. A testbed was set up in simulation to evaluate the performance of MQTT-XT and MAVLINK protocols in terms of UAV management messages and 4 different IoFT scenarios. The experimental results show that MQTT-XT consumes 5 times less message size to transmit command messages and 20 times less for status messages. Additionally, the MQTT-XT protocol-based network completes missions 30% faster, and the packet loss ratio is reduced from 20% to 2%. In conclusion, MQTT-XT outperforms MAVLINK in IoFT autonomous applications.