UAV Swarm Mesh Network using Groove 5ac

[artu3506]

Dear MikroTik Support Team,

We are currently developing a UAV (Drone) Swarm project consisting of 5 drones and 1 Ground Control Station (GCS). We have selected the MikroTik Groove 5ac as our primary communication hardware for both air-to-air and air-to-ground data links.

Our system architecture relies on Nvidia Jetson Nano companion computers and Pixhawk flight controllers. Our primary goal is to establish a highly reliable, low-latency Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) for MAVLink telemetry (UDP) data. If a drone loses direct Line-of-Sight (LoS) with the GCS, we need the system to dynamically route the data through other drones (relaying) with minimum interruption.

We have a few technical questions regarding the optimal configuration for this specific use case:

Can we achieve a highly dynamic mesh network (e.g., using HWMP+ or 802.11s) directly with the default RouterOS firmware, or does it require installing additional custom packages? Is the system essentially "plug-and-play" once the initial mesh interface and ports are configured?

Considering the nodes (drones) will be highly mobile and the network topology will change rapidly, which wireless protocol do you recommend for the fastest topology convergence and lowest latency? (Standard 802.11, NV2, or Nstreme?)

Does the default RouterOS license level included with the Groove 5ac fully support our 6-node (5 Drones + 1 GCS) full-mesh topology without any routing restrictions?

Since we are using UDP broadcast/multicast for our swarm communication, are there any specific RouterOS settings you recommend to prevent network flooding and keep the latency at a minimum?

Would it be most suitable for us to run this system in QGroundControl, Mission Planner, or an external application? What would you recommend? We need to be able to see all five drones at once from a single interface.

Any insights, specific Wiki documentation links, or best practices for aerial MANET applications would be highly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and support.

Best regards,

ITUNOM UAV TEAM/ Arda Turan

[helipos]

Hi, I’ll kick things off here.

Firstly, this isn’t the way to reach the actual support team, which is over here. This is just where users get to hang out, whinge a bit, help each other a lot and hopefully learn something.

@artu3506

Can we achieve a highly dynamic mesh network (e.g., using HWMP+ or 802.11s) directly with the default RouterOS firmware

It would seem so, link. I can see the interface/mesh configuration section on a Metal52ac running standard ROS 7.21.2.

@artu3506

Considering the nodes (drones) will be highly mobile and the network topology will change rapidly, which wireless protocol do you recommend for the fastest topology convergence and lowest latency? (Standard 802.11, NV2, or Nstreme?)

Really good question, we probably need to know a bit more about the swarm.
What sort of distance are they going to get from each other?
How likely is it they will get out of sight from the GCS?
What sort of interruption can you tolerate while it reforms a network?
How much data do you need to deliver to and from each drone?

@artu3506

Does the default RouterOS license level included with the Groove 5ac fully support our 6-node (5 Drones + 1 GCS) full-mesh topology without any routing restrictions?

The Groove 5ac units are a customer end point device. Basically it can’t be an Access Point. Link
So the answer is, it depends on what you try and build.

@artu3506

Since we are using UDP broadcast/multicast for our swarm communication, are there any specific RouterOS settings you recommend to prevent network flooding and keep the latency at a minimum?

I’d try focus on the first problems.

@artu3506

Would it be most suitable for us to run this system in QGroundControl, Mission Planner, or an external application? What would you recommend? We need to be able to see all five drones at once from a single interface.

Sounds like something your going to know better then 99% of us.