Abstract—The operational effectiveness of autonomous drone swarms is critically dependent on resilient communication, particularly for the transmission of high-bandwidth, qualitysensitive data from a leader drone to a ground station in infrastructure-less environments. This study addresses the limitations of standard routing protocols in such scenarios by proposing and evaluating a novel, relay-driven communication strategy for Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs). The purpose of this research is to enhance the reliability of Swarm-to-Ground (S2G) data links through a quality-driven optimization approach. The methodology involves augmenting the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol with an intelligent, multi-objective relay selection algorithm. Our methodology employs a quality-aware A* search algorithm, guided by a novel cost function that integrates predicted data fidelity with path distance. This allows the system to proactively discover a communication route that offers the optimal balance between network efficiency and the integrity of the mission-critical data payload. The system’s performance was validated in the Webots simulation platform using a swarm of Crazyflie 2.0 (CF2) nano-quadcopter models within a challenging 80 m × 80 m operational area featuring obstacles. The principal results of the simulation demonstrate that the framework successfully leverages follower drones as a dynamic relay infrastructure, maintaining a high-fidelity data link even when the leader is beyond direct communication range. The major conclusion is that this quality-aware routing strategy significantly enhances communication resilience and data integrity compared to standard, reactive protocols, enabling the robust transmission of diverse sensor data and facilitating more complex, long-range swarm missions.