Communication-monitoring integrated hardware-in-the-loop simulation and verification system for low-altitude intelligent network

In low-altitude intelligent network, communication link states and flight monitoring services are deeply and strongly coupled. However, existing simulation tools, due to the separation between network topology and physical environment modeling, are inadequate for evaluating the cascading effects of physical environmental changes on communication quality and monitoring services. To address this issue, a communication-monitoring integrated semi-physical simulation and validation system for low-altitude intelligent network is designed and implemented. The system adopts a network-physical domain co-simulation mechanism and, from an engineering perspective, employs a distributed architecture that organically integrates lightweight network simulation based on Mininet with high-fidelity three-dimensional scene simulation based on AirSim. A communication channel calculation model is introduced to achieve closed-loop synchronization between the communication network and dynamic physical scene changes by resolving physical obstruction and signal fading. To satisfy the requirements of hardware-in-the-loop testing, a digital-twin-based mirror mapping mechanism between virtual and physical nodes is designed, enabling real UAV hardware to be seamlessly connected to the virtual simulation network and to perform data interaction with it. The results show that, under the current hardware configuration and test scenarios, the system can stably support closed-loop co-simulation between the physical and network domains at a scale of approximately 500 nodes. Moreover, in representative tests, the system successfully reproduces the cross-domain coupling effect under complex terrain occlusion, in which deterioration of the physical environment causes communication link interruption, which in turn leads to the status transition of simulation client nodes from online to offline. These results verify the efficiency and reliability of the proposed system in evaluating the robustness and boundary performance of protocols for low-altitude intelligent network.