Jul 2026· International Mediterranean Conference on Communications and Networking· pp. 1-6· 0 citations· 20 references
Abstract
Evaluating end-to-end network performance in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite mega-constellations requires systemlevel testbeds capable of capturing extreme satellite mobility, rapidly evolving topologies, and realistic protocol behavior at scale. Existing approaches rely on analytical models or eventdriven simulations that abstract away protocol-level interactions and time-varying orbital dynamics. This paper demonstrates the capability of our developing hybrid emulation-simulation testbed for end-to-end system-level evaluation of LEO megaconstellations, using ground station placement as a representative case study. The testbed instantiates each satellite as an isolated network namespace with a real protocol stack, computes all propagation delays from instantaneous satellite distances and the speed of light, and evaluates performance across a full orbital period rather than a single static snapshot. Using the testbed, we evaluate four placement strategies across Starlink Gen1, OneWeb, and Amazon Kuiper architectures. The results reveal previously unreported system-level insights, including latency saturation beyond approximately 100 ground stations, a reduction in orbital sensitivity from 10-15 ms to less than 1 ms, and fundamental performance differences between ISL-enabled and non-ISL architectures.
This paper introduces a quantitative framework designed to evaluate and compare Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations for global broadband communications. The analysis considers four representative systems: Starlink, OneWeb, Telesat, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, capturing both orbital configuration and network architecture as key design characteristics. The proposed methodology integrates a geometric coverage model together with a latency formulation that accounts for propagation delay and routing effects including Inter-Satellite Links (ISL). In addition, a service density metric is introduced to characterize the spatial distribution of satellites and its impact on system capacity. These metrics are combined into a normalized multi-criteria performance index, allowing a consistent and reproducible system-level comparison. The results reveal that, while coverage is primarily governed by orbital altitude, network architecture plays a dominant role in effective latency, with ISL-enabled constellations achieving improved routing efficiency compared to bent-pipe designs. The integrated performance index shows that low altitude, high-density constellations achieve superior overall performance under latency sensitive scenarios. Starlink ranking highest due to its reduced delay and high spatial density. Project Kuiper exhibits balanced performance across all metrics, while OneWeb and Telesat are constrained by higher latency and lower density despite their broader coverage.
Kleiverg Eulalio Encino Morales, Miguel Ángel Sidón Ayala, Rolando Díaz Castillo· Revista de Ciencias Tecnológ...· 0 citations
The Earth Observation Satellite Scheduling Problem (EOSSP) has seen significant algorithmic
advances, yet the lack of standardized, open-source benchmarks has hindered fair comparison
across studies. Recent large-scale benchmark suites have begun addressing this gap by
providing high-fidelity simulation environments, but these frameworks typically focus on
evaluating sophisticated methods, with limited systematic characterization of simple,
reproducible baselines. This paper presents an open-source, modular scheduling framework
that (1) provides complete implementations of FIFO (First-In-First-Out) and priority-based
greedy heuristics as reproducible baselines, (2) offers a lightweight, extensible platform for
rapid prototyping of scheduling algorithms, and (3) systematically characterizes the
performance of these baselines across 50 synthetically generated test instances spanning five
scales from 10 to 1,000 tasks. We formalize the scheduling problem incorporating rest-to-rest
attitude manoeuvre dynamics, including angular velocity and acceleration limits, along with
energy and storage constraints. Running the framework's own reference implementation
surfaced two concrete defects worth reporting in their own right: a discontinuity in the
originally specified slew-time kinematic model at the boundary between the triangular and
trapezoidal velocity profiles, and a single-satellite scheduling gap that left additional
constellation satellites unused in multi-satellite scenarios. Both are corrected here, and the
corrected framework, including problem instance generators, evaluation metrics, and the two
fixes, is released as open-source software. On the instances tested, priority-based greedy
scheduling improves total scheduled priority over FIFO by 65 to 151 percent depending on
scale, while achieving only 51.1 percent of the provably optimal objective value on small
instances. This gap is reported transparently not to diminish the heuristic’s practical utility, but
to quantify the headroom available for more sophisticated methods relative to the simplest
viable baseline.
Tubolayefa Warekuromor· International Journal of Mod...· 0 citations
The evolution of sixth-generation (6G) networks increasingly demands seamless and reliable connectivity across heterogeneous and geographically dispersed environments, with maritime regions remaining a major challenge due to vast coverage areas, limited terrestrial infrastructure, and complex propagation conditions. In this paper, we investigate the capacity characteristics of space-air-ground-sea integrated networks (SAGSINs) for maritime communications. Specifically, we consider a SAGSIN system comprising a terrestrial base station (BS), a geostationary satellite, a decode-and-forward (DF) relay, and maritime users randomly distributed according to a Poisson point process (PPP). The relay, implemented by either an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) or a large ship, serves multiple maritime users, providing a unified framework for comparing heterogeneous relay platforms and backhaul options. Based on this model, the system performance is analyzed under two representative fading regimes: 1) quasi-static fading, where analytical expressions and tight upper bounds are derived for the outage probability and corresponding outage capacity; and 2) block fading, where closed-form ergodic capacity formulations are obtained to evaluate the long-term average throughput. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations validate the theoretical analysis and quantify the effects of key system parameters. Our results offer insights into the design and optimization of high-reliability maritime communication links, providing guidelines for practical implementation and future 6G SAGSINs development.
Jinpeng Xu, Yingqi He, Lin Zhou et al.· IEEE Transactions on Wireles...· 0 citations
COSME is presented, a route-aware, real-time mobility emulator that integrates multiple impairment models - including obstruction-based loss, constellation-induced jitter, precipitation-driven bandwidth reduction, and packet loss at handovers - into a single framework by orchestrating Linux network namespaces via tc and netem.
Eric Lanfer, Dominic Laniewski, Till Zimmermann et al.· Conference on Applications,...· 0 citations
The demand for Low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite networking and routing is continuously growing. Container-based satellite network emulation becomes an important networking evaluation choice for LEO satellite network. While many container-based satellite network emulators optimize virtual network efficiency, they often overlook route installation latency—the duration of installing computed routes into kernel routing table. This latency represents a significant bottleneck for emulating large-scale LEO constellations, which are characterized by dynamic topologies and frequent, massive routing re-convergences. High routing installation latency not only reduces emulation efficiency but also compromises evaluation reliability and renders subsequent data transmission experiments infeasible. In this paper, we present a Lock-Free and Filtered Route Installation (LFRI) mechanism. LFRI filters out non-effective route installations, thereby shortening the installation procedure without changing the routing results. LFRI employs a lock-free installation mechanism that enables parallelized and efficient route installation. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to the legacy Netlink installation, LFRI reduces the route installation latency by up to 99.9% in emulations of typical LEO satellite constellations, bringing it down to under ten milliseconds, within a performance level comparable to routing installation on physical machines. Meanwhile, in the case study evaluating path availability ratio and restoration time, LFRI yields more consistent and credible experimental data.
Wenhao Lu, Zhiyuan Wang, Shan Zhang et al.· Asia-Pacific Workshop on Net...· 0 citations
This work investigates 2D distributed satellite swarm configurations for direct-to-cell (D2C) applications. Unlike previous studies, which primarily considered swarms as deployment alternatives to monolithic arrays, this paper focuses on exploiting the increased spatial resolution enabled by large distributed apertures. Simulation results show that, for the considered scenarios, increasing the level of antenna distribution across satellite platforms enlarges the effective aperture and improves the system sum rate under ideal operating conditions. While gains are moderate for uniformly distributed users, they become particularly pronounced in scenarios including hotspot with high user densities. The results further show that user scheduling strategies do not invalidate the superiority of highly distributed configurations, as these architectures provide a more balanced rate distribution across the coverage area, including hotspot regions. In addition, the paper analyzes several key implementation challenges associated with large distributed swarms, including errors in inter-satellite relative positioning, synchronization impairments, and limited beamforming and user-position update rates. Although within the range of swarm configurations and scenarios considered in this work, performance gains continue to increase with aperture size, these practical constraints may restrict swarm sizes in the medium term. Nevertheless, the observed performance gains strongly motivate further research into scalable synchronization, positioning and data distribution techniques for future large-scale satellite swarms.
Xavier Artiga, Màrius Caus, Ana I. Pérez-Neira et al.· 0 citations
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