Towards Deep Simulations of LEO Satellite Links Based-on Saratoga

Satellites, in low earth orbit, are increasingly deployed in last years. They are used as well various space missions and mostly in remote sensing missions. Despite this growing interest and the large number of deployed satellites, each space mission has its own requirements according the purposed activities. Engineers are called-upon to develop new codes, algorithms, and to bring changes to the manufacturer’s technology. Initially, the new developed features are implemented on test-beds for the assessment purposes, however, emulation platforms are expensive and their implementation time consuming. Simulation models give the first try out and overcome some issues by giving an agility for a wide range of experimentations in short time, while having a lower cost. In this context, we present a contribution on the widely used simulator by scientific researcher community NS-2. The contribution consists to model the wireless communications between satellites and ground stations based-on SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd) technology. We present the setting-up of additional physical layer modules required to model the radio links in space missions and antenna features; we describe, in addition, the developed module to model the Saratoga transfer protocol as an application layer. Evaluation of the developed modules on NS-2 is performed by simulations and comparisons to the referenced simulator in space industry STK and the realistic data collected from the operational mission Alsat-1B.