On the emulation of geostationary Earth orbit satellite systems

The simulation of complex telecommunication systems, such as satellite-based networks, is seldom sufficient to understand fully their real behavior and to evaluate the quality of service (QoS) perceived by their users. The mean opinion score (MOS) method, widely used to evaluate the perceived QoS, requires the use of a working system, and this is usually not the case for satellites, when studying new protocols and/or new system architectures. A simulator able to replicate in real time the behavior of the system under examination would be very useful: we call it an emulator. This paper describes an emulator for IP data traffic on a single beam GEO satellite, with TDM/TDMA radio links and on-board circuit switch. The emulator has been implemented in the CNIT Radio Communication Laboratory at Politecnico di Torino.