Techniques and applications
Franco Davoli, Mario Marchese · 2003
The chapter highlights techniques to simulate the behavior of real-time and non real-time satellite systems and clarifies possible application fields and motivations. Communication systems and, in particular, satellite components have increased their complexity. Simulation is a reality to explore new solutions without increasing hazards and costs: long phases of space missions are completely dedicated to forecast the behavior of the systems to be implemented and simulations are widely used. The chapter focuses on methods to evaluate the efficiency of a simulator, underlines some traffic models suited to simulate communication systems and explains particular topics where the authors have direct experience. A couple of tools are presented applied to the satellite environment: a C-language based non-real time software simulator and a real-time simulator (emulator), where real machines can be attached to the tool, so as to avoid traffic modeling. Performance results are reported to better explain the concepts of the chapter.