CUSCUS: An integrated simulation architecture for distributed networked control systems

The merging of networking and control fields has always brought interesting innovations but the tools and structures for proper and easy management of experiments still lag behind. Different solutions have been proposed to handle general control problems and, more in detail, for fine control of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) dynamics. They lack, however, an efficient and detailed network-side simulation, usually available only on dedicated software. On the other hand, current advancements in network simulations suites often do not include an accurate simulation of controlled systems. In the middle 2010s, integrated solutions are still lacking. For these reasons, in this paper we propose a simulation architecture for networked control systems. The architecture is based on well-known solutions in both the fields of networking simulation and UAV control simulation. We integrate them into a compact and efficient solution that shows scalability features and negligible architectural delays, as experimental results demonstrate.