Integrated Modeling and Flight Validation of a Long-Endurance UAV Control Algorithm

This paper presents an integrated modeling, simulation, and validation framework for evaluating a wind-adaptive long-endurance control algorithm for small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The proposed framework combines aerodynamic, propulsion, battery, and atmospheric modeling within a MATLAB/Simulink and ArduPilot software-in-the-loop (SITL) environment, enabling consistent assessment of energy performance under wind-disturbed flight conditions. The long-endurance control algorithm is developed to reduce energy consumption by allowing the aircraft to intentionally drift with the ambient wind and subsequently return into the headwind, rather than continuously counteracting wind disturbances through conventional loiter flight. The algorithm is evaluated through both SITL-based simulations and real flight tests using a lightweight fixed-wing UAV platform. Experimental results demonstrate an average power reduction of approximately 21–27.5% compared to conventional loiter flight, with consistent energy-saving trends observed across simulated and real flight environments. The results indicate that endurance improvement can be achieved by leveraging environmental wind conditions and allowing controlled wind-induced drift, rather than strictly enforcing continuous position-holding flight.