Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
satellite constellation
emulation
realism
resource overhead
evaluation
An experimental evaluation of satellite constellation emulators
🤖 AI Summary
Existing open-source satellite constellation simulators lack systematic evaluation of the trade-off between observational fidelity and computational overhead, hindering their use in high-confidence research. This study presents the first parallel empirical comparison of three mainstream simulators—StarryNet, OpenSN, and Celestial—within a unified framework, leveraging real-world link measurements from WetLinks to comprehensively assess their accuracy in delay modeling, dynamic topology representation, and computational efficiency. The experiments uncover critical limitations of each simulator in balancing fidelity and performance, thereby offering empirical insights and concrete directions for the design of future satellite network simulators that achieve both high realism and low resource consumption.
📝 Abstract
Satellite emulation software is essential for research due to the lack of access to physical testbeds. To be useful, emulators must generate observations that are well-aligned with real-world ones, and they must have acceptable resource overheads for setting up and running experiments. This study provides an in-depth evaluation of three open-source emulators: StarryNet, OpenSN, and Celestial. Running them side-by-side and comparing them with real-world measurements from the WetLinks study identifies shortcomings of current satellite emulation techniques as well as promising avenues for research and development.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
satellite constellation emulation
experimental evaluation
real-world validation
open-source emulators
network simulation
🔎 Similar Papers
No similar papers found.
