  Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has extreme potential to change the future
wireless sensor network (WSN). The UAV-based WSN performances is influenced by
different system parameters. To investigate this issue, it is necessary to
analyses the effects of system parameters on the UAV-based WSN performance. In
this paper, we design a NS-3 script for UAV-based WSN according to the
hierarchical manner of TCP/IP model. We configure all layers by using NS-3
model objects and set and modify the values used by objects to investigate the
effects of system parameters (access mechanism, UAV trajectory pattern, UAV
velocity, number of sensors, and sensor traffic generation rate) on throughput,
and average delay. The simulation results show that the RTS/CTS access
mechanism provides better performance than the basic data access mechanism and
the mobility model which has been prescribed shows higher performance than the
random mobility model. Moreover, the results indicate that higher velocity of
UAV degrades the system performance in terms of throughput and delay. Our
design procedure represents a good guideline for new NS-3 users to design and
modify script and results greatly benefit the network design and management.
