Guidance Software-In-the-Loop simulation using X-Plane and Simulink for UAVs

This paper introduces an new method to simulate a guidance algorithm running on Simulink that controls a fixed wing unmanned aircraft model running on the flight simulator X-Plane, which simulates the vehicle dynamics, sensors, and actuators. It presents the necessary settings for running simulations on small aircrafts in X-Plane and explains the UDP communication between the flight simulator and Simulink. The functions and codes to interpret X-Plane packets are explicated in details, and all codes are written in Matlab language in order to facilitate the development. As a final implementation we propose a guidance algorithm based on waypoints to validate the Software-In-the-Loop where the UAV needs to complete two missions that are also presented in this paper.