Satellite constellation network emulator for end-to-end performance evaluation of the future satellite networks

The importance of satellite systems for telecommunications continues to increase. As there are new launches of satellites every year and many more satellite constellations are currently being under development, the Quality of Service (QoS) and system performance in specific use cases is crucial for many stakeholders. Simulation tools enable to assess the proposed architecture and carry out extensive performance analysis of the system in relatively early stages of development. The different simulation tools tend to concentrate on certain aspects of system performance, and rarely provide a complete and detailed system analysis. This article presents a Satellite Constellation Network Emulator (SCNE) tool, which combines the power of Systems Tool Kit (STK) and the flexibility of Network Simulator 3 (ns-3) to allow to study and assess not only satellite propagation characteristics but also protocol performance in satellite-terrestrial network