2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS)

Athens, Greece. September 1-4, 2020

A Gazebo/ROS-based Communication-Realistic Simulator

for Networked sUAS
Sangwoo Moon1 , John J. Bird1 , Steve Borenstein2 , and Eric W. Frew1

Abstract— Although communication is a critical factor of

situational awareness and performance on networked sUAS,
most simulators do not provide realistic wireless communication
modules. It prevents realizing communication among multiple
UA and information sharing, which yields significantly different
results compared with actual results in the real world. This
paper presents a communication-realistic simulator to improve
more realistic results from coordination or cooperative plan-
ning/control of networked sUAS. The simulator in this paper is
based on Gazebo/ROS with ArduPilot, where ArduPilot-Socket-
API (APS) which generates aircraft data to be usable in ROS
from ArduPilot is implemented. The wireless transceiver plugin
in Gazebo is used to mimic the wireless communication between
two UA with aids of the Hata-Okumura model for wireless Fig. 1: Gazebo/ROS-based simulator that deploys two UA
radio propagation and quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) to localize one ground target. Two UA share their target
for data package modulation. Simulation results describe how
realistic communication in the presented simulator affects data information over communication that is emulated by Gazebo
delivery concerning different communication-related parame- wireless transmitter/receiver plugins. The delivered data and
ters. This paper also gives how well the presented simulator its localization results are visualized by RViz in real-time.
emulates communication status realistically by comparing it
with communication data gathered in real flight tests.

I. I NTRODUCTION multiple sUAS (e.g., task allocation, cooperative information

Communication impacts the overall performance of net-
worked small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS). It affects
sharing information between unmanned aircraft (UA) which
can be related to situational awareness. Many networked
sUAS missions that require a cooperative/coordinated frame-
work are based on how much well the networked system
exchanges information between UA. It represents a property
of sharing information as a team behavior, which leads
to the situation when the information is aggregated over
communication. Figuring out how much communication im-
pacts on the overall performance of the networked sUAS is
important to design more feasible results in the real world.
In particular, efficient communication tools are desired to
examine approaches in the use of multiple sUAS in a realistic
environment.
A simulator is an effective tool for experimenting with
multiple, networked sUAS. The realistic simulator can be
performed as a prior step of doing the real flight tests. The
flight tests of a team of sUAS require its operational costs
and are difficult to realize as the number of unmanned aircraft
increases. The operation has a different aspect compared
with handling a single sUAS. Evaluating algorithms of
*This work was supported by Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-
UAS) and by the National Science Foundation under grants IIP-1535707 and
IIP-1251537.
1 Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boul-
der, Boulder, CO 80303, USA sangwoo.moon@colorado.edu
2 Integrated Remote and In Situ Sensing (IRISS), University of Colorado
Boulder, Boulder, CO 80303, USA
gathering) also needs enough number of flight tests to support
its performance guarantees. However, simulation testbeds can
help us for experimental evaluation by rapidly reproducing
its environments [1]. Moreover, the assessment process is
convenient to analyze due to the easy procedure in terms of
changing simulation configurations or system input parame-
ters.
The important issue of using simulator is to prepare
tests in real-world conditions. One of the critical points in
implementing the simulator is that the simulation should give
realistic environments. It is essential to show promising data
compared with results from real-world conditions. However,
although communication plays as a critical condition of
networked sUAS, many approaches have been considered
in perfect communication [2], [3], [4] or the communication
with simple models (e.g., limited communication channels
[5], [6], disk models [7], [8]) in their simulation.
Several simulators have been presented that emulate wire-
less communication models [9]. Although Stage does not
provide a general wireless communication model, a simple
wireless model such as a constant communication range that
can be adjustable as an input parameter can be available
as a patch [10]. It also gives a basic formulation of radio
propagation such as the Friis model and log distance-based
pass loss. Webots supports radio emitters and receivers under
infrared bandwidth. Similar to Stage, ARGoS also configures
maximum transmission range and direction [11]. USARSim
is a simulation tool that mimics the message exchange proce-
dure between two robots. Unlike other simulators, USARSim

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 uses a server that handles wireless communications as a
middle-ware in order to manage communication messages.
Its communication characteristics such as range are mainly
computed by an indoor radio propagation model of which
parameters are induced by wall attenuation factor [12].
ARGoS also similarly provides communication environments
with wireless sensors and actuators. The wireless devices use
a simple communication model under predefined range [13],
which is similar to the disk models. Still, more sophisticated
communication models in terms of pass loss and stochastic
factors should be considered to serve more realistic environ-
ments. Besides, the approaches mentioned previously still
have an issue with formulating information flow for data
sharing over communication between sUAS, which has been
considered abstractly.
This paper presents a communication-realistic simula-
tor based on Gazebo and robot operating system (ROS)
that provides an imperfect communication environment for
networked sUAS. Gazebo is an open-source 3D robotics
simulator operated in real-time. The Gazebo is widely used
in the robotics field because of its high fidelity physical
engine and various type of sensors [14]. ROS is a middle-
ware robotics system that provides services designed for
an integrated hardware/software components such as robot
motion/path planning, low-level device control, sensors and
actuators, and message and data package management [15].
ROS is designed as an open-source that users can choose
configurations and libraries to realize the sensors, robot
states, and robot motion planning/control. Gazebo supports
a plugin that realizes the functionality and message/service
calls using ROS [16].
On top of that, ArduPilot is an unmanned vehicle autopilot
served as an open-source that can supports various types of
autonomous mobile systems such as multi-rotors, fixed-wing
aircraft, helicopters, ground rovers, and boats/submarine ve-
hicles [17]. Although ArduPilot is widely used for operating
sUAS, however, the autopilot software is not directly appli-
cable to operate the Gazebo/ROS-based simulator because be
its functionality in message-passing and packaging. Mavros
have been developed which converts sUAS messages in a
protocol of Mavlink to ROS in order to tackle the issue
[18]. Instead of using Mavros due to its unstable flight
plan engagement, this paper presented the ardupilot-socket-
API (APS). The APS is a customized middle-ware software
module that yields aircraft states as a topic and engages flight
plans via actions supported by ROS in real-time.
The presented simulator implements single-hop, meshed
wireless communication for data sharing in networked sUAS.
The communication model based on the packet erasure
channel is presented of which the probability of delivery
is given by received signal strength and quadrature-phase
shift keying (QPSK) modulation. This paper uses the Hata-
Okumura model as a radio propagation equation to get the
received signal strength which can well emulate the wireless
signals in the real world.
The communication performance on the presented simu-
lator is analyzed through received signal power distributions
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and its profile in terms of signal frequency and distance
between two UA. In particular, the simulation demonstrates
how communication channel is well implemented compared
with data obtained from real flight tests.
The key features and contributions of this paper are:
• An integrated framework of sUAS simulator based on
Gazebo/ROS with ArduPilot and APS,
• A realistic wireless communication model and its imple-
mentation to be usable in Gazebo/ROS-based simulator,
• Simulation results and analysis of wireless communica-
tion by comparing the results with real flight data.
II. G AZEBO /ROS- BASED S IMULATOR F RAMEWORK
The presented simulator is from an integrated framework
among the necessary components. The components are based
on Gazebo/ROS with ArduPilot. There are several techni-
cal issues to be tackled for integration. The first issue is
the presented simulator is built based on open-source. It
means a data conversion procedure is required in order
to guarantee the compatibility between one component to
another. Secondly, the simulator should provide the basic
environment that supports convenient user interfaces for
assessing designed algorithms (e.g., planning, estimation).
Lastly, the simulator should be feasible and robust so that
it delivers data in a synchronized manner and shows the
efficiency of data exchange.
The presented simulator uses additional modules for the
conversion process for integration. In addition, the simu-
lator uses synchronized data sharing using actions/services
messages in ROS. The simulator internally connects its
components through Gazebo/ROS messages and TCP/UDP
connections (Fig. 2). An APS/ROS bridge locates between
UA planning/control components and APS, and the APS
also connects with the autopilot module which is based on
ArduPilot(Section II-A). The autopilot component is also
connected with the Software-in-the-loop (SITL) supported by
ArduPilot that allows us to operate sUAS without hardware
components (Section II-C). The UA data are obtained from
the Gazebo with Gazebo/ROS plugins (Section II-B) and pass
through another plugin that is used as a bridge between
the SITL and the Gazebo (Section II-D). The presented
architecture also provides more user-friendly interfaces for
algorithm implementation and its evaluation than using flight
commands via Mavlink/Mavros protocols.
A. APS: ArduPilot-Socket-API
APS retrieves state data from and sends commands to the
autopilot, providing an interface which is accessible to other
software components via world wide web or local network
connections. An APS instance for each UA connects to the
autopilot via TCP on a local network and provides global
access to that UA. At the client end, an APS/ROS bridge
module makes UA state data available as ROS messages
and transmits commands received in ROS messages to the
autopilot through APS. Multiple APS and APS/ROS bridge
instances can be run on a single computer by indexing the
autopilot and APS port numbers to each UA.
 Fig. 2: Gazebo/ROS-based simulator architecture. The presented simulator forms as an integrated framework of Gazebo/ROS
and ArduPilot/SITL. Note the communication between two UA is not represented, which is shown in Figure 4.

TABLE I: aircraft/state message profile

Property Format Description Note

header Header frame ID, ROS time stamp
mav id unit32 aircraft ID
euler geometry msgs/Vector3 roll, pitch, yaw Euler frame
lla geometry msgs/Vector3 longitude, latitude, altitude ECEF frame
local position geometry msgs/Vector3 local position vector (x, y, z) Cartesian frame
inertial velocity geometry msgs/Vector3 velocity vector (vx , vy , vz ) inertial frame
v ias float32 indicated airspeed from pitot-static sensor
v gnd float32 ground speed
speed float32 airspeed body frame
mode string flight mode (AUTO, GUIDED, RTL, MANUAL)
base mode string flight mode commanded by ground station
heartbeat float32 fail-safe indicator
flight time float32 aircraft flight time sec
voltage float32 battery voltage
current float32 battery current
wind geometry msgs/Vector3 wind vector (wx , wy , wz ) body frame

The APS/ROS bridge converts flight data received by
the APS to aircraft/state topic in ROS. The
aircraft/state topic contains current position, attitude,
flight mode, throttle arming status, battery voltage, estimated
wind, and other flight data in terms of flight operation (Table
I). It allows us to retrieve current UA data in real time
with ROS messages. The APS/ROS bridge also receives the
waypoint command in ROS actions that give flight-plan and
execute the aircraft guidance at the autopilot module.
B. Gazebo/ROS Plugin
Gazebo has a challenging issue on emulating aerodynamic
forces. Compared with other simulators such as FlightGear
or Xplane, the vanilla version of Gazebo does not support
the accurate aerodynamic effects. In particular, the wind
and weather that crucially impact the aircraft dynamics are
not provided either. To tackle the technical challenge, the
presented simulator uses Gazebo/ROS plugins as add-on
modules to realize realistic environments.
Three plugins are majorly implemented in the pre-
sented simulator: LiftDragWind plugin (based on
the stock LiftDrag plugin but modified to support
wind), ROSWeather plugin, and Sensor (based on
Gazebo ROS pkgs with modified wireless transceiver for
communication). The LiftDragWind plugin uses aerody-
namic coefficients that are given as parameters from Gazebo
aircraft model database. The ROSWeather plugin gives
the background wind computed based on the given wind-
map database. The Gazebo ROS pkgs for Sensor plugin
supports necessary interfaces to simulate robots in ROS via
ROS messages, services, and dynamic reconfigure [16].

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 C. ArduPilot/SITL
The ArduPilot is an autopilot toolkit that can operate on an
extensive types of platforms. The SITL allows us to execute
the ArduPilot without requiring any specific hardware [19].
The latest version of ArduPilot supports various types of
unmanned vehicles to be realized in built-in simulators. The
sensor and flight data are obtained based on a flight dynamics
model in the SITL. The ArduPilot with SITL provides the
full spectrum of development toolkit available in C++. It
allows us to develop and to test new relative components
in ArduPilot in a straightforward manner. Another merit
of ArduPilot is that it interfaces to external simulators.
The advantage supports interlocking between ArduPilot and
robotics physical simulators such as Gazebo.
The UDP port numbers that connect between the ArduPilot
and SITL are indicative only and can be changed by multiple
UA. For example, Figure 2 illustrates the ports as 5501 for
receiving data and 5502 for transmitting data in view of UA.
However, it varies by indices of UA, so they can vary to be
other port numbers (e.g., 5504 for a receiver and 5505 for a
transmitter). The index of UA determines the allocation of a
port number in the presented simulator.
D. ArduPilot/SITL-Gazebo Plugin
The ArduPilot/SITL-Gazebo plugin supported by [20] pro-
vides a data linkage between ArduPilot/SITL and Gazebo.
The Gazebo provides the ArduCopterPlugin class that
interfaces ArduCopter from ArduPilot stack modeled after
SITL starts. The class needs parameters that are related to
flight control gains and rotor throttle, which can be config-
ured in object description of Gazebo which is represented in
sdf format. Because there is an issue of synchronization
between ArduPilot/SITL and Gazebo, some modifications
for Gazebo interface to prevent blocking Gazebo are imple-
mented in the presented simulator. Due to the fact that the
Gazebo does not provides accurate airspeed, as mentioned
in Section II-B, the plugin uses the airspeed sensor imple-
mented in ArduPilot.
E. Gazebo and RViz
The major role of Gazebo is to support the presented
simulator with feasible physical engines and realistic sensor
modules. On top of that, Gazebo is a powerful tool to visual-
ize the behavior of a fleet of aircraft and ground targets. The
visualization helps us the understanding of situations (e.g.,
whether UA goes to the expected location, how fast a fleet
of sUAS achieves a given mission, or how sUAS performs
when part of UA fails due to the lack of communication or
accidents).
RViz is a 3D visualization tool for ROS applications
[21]. It provides a view of robot models, captured sensor
information, and replay of captured data. The simulator in
this paper uses RViz as a tool of visualization for measure-
ments and estimated target states while representing a set
of trajectories from networked sUAS. Thus, related ROS
messages are subscribed by RViz, where the messages are
generated by each UA. Note that the messages are classified
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by using namespace property of ROS that differentiates based
on which UA sends.
III. C OMMUNICATION M ODEL AND
G AZEBO /ROS- BASED I MPLEMENTATION
A. Communication Model
The simulation introduced in this paper considers a single-
hop communication. In other words, UA i directly sends its
measurements, aircraft states, and decisions to UA ` when
the UA i is in a neighbor set of the UA `. Consider a situation
that the communication model is formulated as a probability
conditioned on the transmitted data package and induced
by communication channel parameters. It is mathematically
formulated as
i j
` ψk ∼ Pco (i` Ψjk |` Φjk ; i` Θk ) (1)
where i` ψkj and Pco (•) describe a data package of target j
received by the UA i from another UA ` at time k and a
probability function of communication respectively. i` Ψjk and
` j
Φk are set of all possible outcomes of receiving data over
communication from UA ` to UA i and a data package of
UA ` that can be transmitted respectively. In addition, Θk
denotes a set of all communication channel parameters which
contains transmitted power, power loss, antenna sensitivity,
and the relative distance between UA i and UA `.
The presented simulation considers a packet erasure chan-
nel as a communication model. The User datagram protocol
(UDP) is a good example of the packet erasure channel,
which is widely used for multi-agent systems in various
applications (e.g., radio frequency (RF) emitters tracking [22]
or network broadcasting [23]) [24].
The packet erasure channel has two outcomes: succeed
to deliver or fail to deliver. The outcomes are generated
by a probability of delivery over the communication net-
work that obeys a Bernoulli distribution mainly determined
by communication parameters i` Θk [24], [25]. Let i` βk =
i i
` βk (` Θk ) denote a probability of the event when the data
are successfully delivered from UA ` to UA i at time k.
Then the communication probability of (1) is represented as
if i` Ψjk = ` Φjk
 i
β
Pco (i` Ψjk |` Φjk ; i` Θk ) = ` k i . (2)
1 − ` βk if i` Ψjk = ∅
Consider neighbors of the UA i notated as Nki is a set of UA
of which transmitted data can be captured by the UA i over
the communication. non-neighbors are in the complement of
Nki . An example that the presented simulator considers as a
data package is a set of measurements, current aircraft state,
and decided waypoint set from the planner. Then
 ` j ` `
h yk , sk , sT i if ` ∈ Nki
i j
` Ψk = (3)
∅ otherwise
where ` yjk is a measurement observed and sent by the UA `
and T = {k + 1, k + 2, · · · , k + T } is a group of planning
horizon considered by the planner of UA ` (See Table II for
details). Note there is a case when the ` ∈ Nki but i ∈ / Nk`
due to (2).
 Fig. 3: Flow chart of delivered data package generation over the communication channel. The received signal strength
is generated by the formulation of the Hata-Okumura model. The determination of whether data is delivered through
communication is obtained with the aids of quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) that represents data modulation under the
packet erasure channel (PEC).

TABLE II: communication message profile: realization of i` Ψjk

Property Format Description Note

header Header frame ID, ROS time stamp
freq unit16 UA ` communication signal frequency aircraft ID
state aircraft/state UA ` current position, mode aircraft/state message format
waypoints geometry msgs/Points[] waypoint vector of UA `
measurements RF power[] received RF signal strength of ground targets measured by UA `

Algorithm 1 Packet erasure channel-based data package (dBm). In (4), i` Λtx , Γ`tx , and Γirx represents the transmitted
generator over communication power of UA `, antenna gains of UA ` and UA i, respectively.
j j
1: Begin with data package i` Φk = h` yk , s`k , s`T i, communication In general, the transmitted power is typically 30 dBm for 1-
parameter set i` Θk = hΛ`tx , Γ` , Γi , λ` , α, δi , nk , nbyte i, and Watt IEEE 802.11a (Wifi) communication protocol [29] and
current position of aircraft i sik . takes 2.30 as antenna gain when a lossless antenna is used
2: Compute received signal stength i` Λrx k using (4). [30]. λ` is the wavelength of the signal propagated from
3: Compute bit error rate i` ηk using (6) and (8).
4: Compute probability of delivery failfure i` βk using (5).
UA `, α ∈ [6, 12] represents a parameter that determines by
5: Generate a random value w from uniform distribution U(0, 1). terrain characteristics. In particular, the parameter goes to 6
6: if w > i` βk then when the terrain is flat and empty, and it is close to 12 under
7: Take data package i` ψkj = h` yjk , s`k , s`T i. urban environments. Lastly, sk , δi ≤ 0, and vi denote the
8: else position of UA, the communication sensitivity that is related
9: Take data package i` ψkj = ∅.
to the noise floor, and the signal strength noise that asymptot-
10: end if
11: return i` ψkj . ically follows a normal distribution N (0, σ 2 ), respectively.
The probability density function of distribution N (0, σ 2 ) has
been investigated in terms of signal frequency and terrain
profile [31]. Note the received power takes the absolute value
The presented simulator uses the QPSK as a modulation
of noise vi because of the assumption that the signal noise
of communication [26] where the received signal strength
only decreases the received signal strength.
is based on the Hata-Okumura propagation model [27],
The next step is to figure out the probability i` βk using the
[28]. The model is well defined for various communication
received signal strength. The QPSK formulates the probabil-
topology (e.g., point-to-point, broadcast). It means the model
ity of delivery failure i` βk that can be modeled as
can apply to the problem where this paper considers. The
model also captures mobile antennas where its height is 1–10 i
= 1 − exp(nbyte log(1 − i` ηk ))
` βk (5)
m, base station of which antenna heights is 30–200 m, and
communication link distances of 1–10 km. Let i` Λrx k be a where nbyte is the byte number of delivered data package,
received power of signal delivered from UA ` to UA i. Then i
` ηk represents bit error rate (BER) that is formulated as
i rx
` Λk follows s 
i rx
i rx
` Λk = Λ`tx + Γ` + Γi − 20 log10 (λ` ) − 20 log10 (4π) i
` ηk = erfc
 P (` Λk )  . (6)
P (nk )
− 10α log10 (ksik − s`k k) + δi − |vi |. (4)
Note that all properties are represented in milli-decibel where erfc(•) is a complementary error function that is

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Fig. 4: Communication framework between sUAS i and
sUAS `. Data packages over communication are realized
by VirtualCommunication module in the presented
simulator which represents the communication model.
defined as
Z x
1 2
erfc(x) = 1 − √ et dt
π −x
and nk is a noise floor, which represents how well the
receiver captures a signal from the sum of all noise sources
within a measurement system. In (6), the function P (•)
represents the conversion from milli-decibel to power which
obeys
P (x) = 0.001 × 10x/10 .
Algorithm 1 shows how to generate an outcome of data
package from the packet erasure channel-based communica-
tion. Note that a binary random generator logic is used to get
the outcome from a communication event (see Lines from 5
to 10).
B. Communication Implementation
The simulator in this paper implements the communication
based on WirelessTransceiver module supported
by sensor plugins built in Gazebo [32]. The major change
is to build topics that contain delivered data packages
represented in Table II using a ROS-based framework.
However, encapsulating data under the module may not be
admissible technically because the module should receive
required data of Table II. The WirelessTransmitter
and WirelessReceiver modules inherited by
WirelessTransceiver module should be initialized
and publish its topics before spawning ArduPilot node.
It yields a circular flow in the initialization because the
delivered data are from ArduPilot node. Therefore, it is
more realistic to emulate communication in the presented
simulator by publishing CommunicationStatus
topic through Algorithm 1 instead of publishing a data
package. VirtualCommunication node subscribes all
CommunicationStatus topics and all other topics from
all UA to be packaged. The VirtualCommunication
node eventually build the delivered data package based
on the subscribed CommunicationStatus topic (See
Figure 4).
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Note that the CommunicationStatus topic exists
according to UA. Let i bk = {i1 bk ,i2 bk , · · · , ina bk } rep-
resents CommunicationStatus topic published from
WirelessReceiver module in UA i. Its element i` bk is
formulated as an indicator represented as
if w > i` βk

i True
` bk = False otherwise
(9)
where the condition is implemented by the line 6 of Algo-
rithm 1.
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS AND A NALYSIS
A. Simulation Configuration
The purpose of simulations is to analyze communication
properties in terms of distributions of received wireless signal
power and probability of delivery on the packet erasure
channel model. The simulation results on communication
channel performance should follow the results from real
(7) networked sUAS flight tests. The presented simulator used
realistic parameters that are from the specifications of actual
communication devices (See Table III). The simulation con-
sidered a situation when each UA has 68 mW communication
signal power under IEEE 802.11 (Wifi) protocol where
networked sUAS was performed in flat terrain with trees
and grasses are scattered. Due to the protocol regulation on
Wifi, the channel bandwidth was restricted (See frequency
(8) range configuration of Table III). 18.0 dBm was configured
as transmitter power from the unit conversion of 63 mW.
The simulation results in this paper answer the following
questions: i) Does the signal power under the presented
communication model follow the Gaussian distributions? ii)
How does the relationship between received signal power
and the relative distance between two UA exist under com-
plicated signal strength formulation? iii) How would be the
probability of delivery profile with respect to the relative
distance? iv) How well the presented simulator match the real
data? Section IV-B evaluates the presented simulator based
on these technical questions.
B. Results and Analysis
1) Received signal power analysis: Because the received
signal power modeled as (4) is a function of signal fre-
quency and relative distance, a series of simulations on the
received power concerning the frequency and distance were
performed. The simulation considered a condition that 500
TABLE III: Simulator parameter configuration
Parameter Quantity
receiver antenna gain 2.30 dBm
transmitter antenna gain 2.30 dBm
transmitter power 18.0 dBm
noise floor -340.0 dBm
byte number 40
sensitivity -90.0
frequency range 2412-2462 MHz, 5180-5815 MHz
terrain parameter 9.0
noise variance 6 dBm
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 2412Mhz 2462Mhz 5180Mhz 5815Mhz
200 200 200 200

150 150 150 150

Frequency

Frequency

Frequency
Frequency
100 100 100 100

50 50 50 50

0 0 0 0
-360 -355 -350 -345 -340 -335 -330 -325 -360 -355 -350 -345 -340 -335 -330 -325 -360 -355 -350 -345 -340 -335 -330 -325 -360 -355 -350 -345 -340 -335 -330 -325
Rx power [dBm] Rx power [dBm] Rx power [dBm] Rx power [dBm]
120m 240m
150 150 360m 480m
150 150

100 100
100 100
Frequency
Frequency

Frequency

Frequency
50 50 50 50

0 0 0 0
-285 -280 -275 -270 -265 -330 -320 -310 -300 -345 -340 -335 -330 -325 -320 -365 -360 -355 -350 -345 -340 -335
Rx power [dBm] Rx power [dBm] Rx power [dBm] Rx power [dBm]

Fig. 5: Histograms of received signal power of communication in terms of frequency (upper) and relative distance (lower).

1
-240

-260
probability of delivery 0.8
Rx power [dBm]

-280
0.6
-300

-320 0.4

-340
0.2
-360 simulation
real
-380 0
60 120 180 240 300 360 420 480 540 600 0 100 200 300 400 500 600
distance [m] distance [m]
Fig. 6: Boxplot of received signal power in terms of relative distance (left) and comparison of the simulated probability of
delivery and real results from flight tests (right).

data packages were transmitted from one UA to another. say that power was increased due to the signal noise. This is
As expected in (4), the shape of distributions on the signal because it breaks the basic property of Gaussian distributions.
strength does not depends on the frequency (See upper Second, the RF signal propagation was not linear, rather it
subfigures of Figure 5). Only the magnitude and range obeys the rule of the log functions. In other words, the log-
of signal strength were related to the frequency. As the distance function does not allow the noise under Gaussian
frequency increased the received signal strength decreased distribution. Instead, the noise contains the property on log
with a diminishing rate. This is because of submodular functions.
property on the log function. 2) Probability of delivery analysis: The probability of
Similar results were also captured in the signal power delivery was analyzed in terms of the relative distance
distributions with respect to communication range (See lower between two UA (See right-side of figure 6). The crosses
subfigures of Figure 5 and left-side of Figure 6). The rate in blue of Figure 6 represents the obtained probability from
of received power was decreased when the relative distance a series of simulation runs by changing relative distance
grows constantly. All shapes of distributions in Figure 5 were parameters with the same frequency condition. Note that both
similar which conclude that the distribution is not changed subfigures of Figure 6 are under the same conditions. The
by frequency or relative distance. probability of delivery was computed by using the following
equation as
Note that the distributions did not follow Gaussian distri-
i
bution. Two factors affected distribution. Firstly, the signal i ` Nrx
` βk = iN
(10)
noise just reduced the received power. It is not reasonable to ` tx

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 where i` Nrx is the number of data packages that are suc-
cessfully delivered to the wireless receiver and i` Ntx is
the number of data packages that are transmitted from the
wireless transmitter. The probability of delivery drops when
the relative distance is over 300 meters. Furthermore, the
probability is close to zero if the distance is over 500 meters.
In other words, there are stochastic properties on communi-
cation between 300 meters and 500 meters of distance.
The results were further investigated by comparing with
the empirical data which were gathered in real flight ex-
periments. The flight test was performed using two UA
under the same condition described in Table III. The wireless
communication obeyed IEEE 802.11 protocol at 2.40 GHz
using Atheros Mini-PCI Wifi cards [22]. The data were
obtained from 21 flight tests by using 40-byte data packets
with 63 mW transmit power. The real data are represented on
the right side of Figure 6 as circular markers in red which are
averages over 20 m bins. The same terrain information where
the flight tests performed was also applied to the presented
simulator.
The comparison results present the fact that the presented
simulator generates communication conditions that are simi-
lar to real data results. However, there were some differences
between them. Firstly, the real probability of delivery showed
around 0.90 between the distance from 100 meters to 300
meters of distance, which was different from simulated
results. This is due to the issue of the communication sensi-
tivity that is hard to predict under a complicated environment.
The reduction rate on the probability was different, although
the simulated results followed well the real results. This is
because the terrain parameter did not accurate. Nevertheless,
the overall shape of the probability of delivery profile was
well-matched with the real data in terms of communication
range where the probability of delivery decreases.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
A communication-realistic simulator for networked sUAS
was presented in this paper. The presented simulator was im-
plemented based on Gazebo/ROS with ArduPilot/SITL soft-
ware environment. The integration of Gazebo and ArduPilot
was presented by introducing the modification of ArduPi-
lot/SITL Gazebo plugin that operates as a connection be-
tween two software via Gazebo messages and UDP channels.
The presented architecture also described how the algorithms
that users want to evaluate are interlocked and should be
implemented by the APS module. The APS module converts
received aircraft data from ArduPilot as ROS messages.
Furthermore, The APS delivers planning decisions to the
autopilot module.
This paper formulated the communication model and
its implementation in the presented simulator. The packet
erasure channel was implemented that is widely used as
a model of data package delivery. The Wifi communica-
tion link was implemented based on the RF propagation
model (Hata-Okumara radio propagation) and the signal
modulation (QPSK). This paper also introduced how to real
communication is implemented in Gazebo which used the
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virtual communication module that determines the network
connection status.
The presented simulator was evaluated by analyzing the
communication-related data under realistic parameter condi-
tions. The received signal power was investigated in terms of
the communication channel frequency and relative distance.
Firstly, the distributions of received signal strength generated
by the presented simulator did not follow the Gaussian prop-
erties. The probability of delivery in terms of distance did not
follow the linear property. The results also indicated that the
stochastic properties of communication should be considered.
The simulated communication results were also compared
with real flight test results to check whether the presented
simulator shows realistic communication performance.
The presented simulator is expected to use in various
applications in networked sUAS by serving realistic commu-
nication conditions. For instance, the simulator can illustrate
how the communication impacts on the data sharing and
information gathering in networked sUAS under cooperative
target tracking scenarios. Ultimately, the presented simulator
is expected to reduce the consumed time for verification pro-
cedure of algorithms on networked sUAS while it improves
the results more realistically. The simulator can shrink gaps
between simulation and real-world situations.
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