The document describes a traffic simulator tool developed for multibeam GEO satellite communication systems. The simulator uses reliable datasets on spatial-temporal traffic distributions to model traffic across satellite beam patterns. It includes algorithms to identify beam borders, associate users with beams, and determine channel coefficients incorporating interference. The simulator can help design satellite systems and enable technologies like beam hopping. It provides visual and statistical outputs on heterogeneous traffic demands across beams over time.

1. Authors: Hayder Al-Hraishawi, Eva Lagunas, and Symeon Chatzinotas
Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT)
University of Luxembourg
Traffic Simulator for Multibeam GEO Satellite
Communication Systems
Presenter
Vaibhav Gupta
Research Associate, SIGCOM

2.  Satellites can provide telecommunication services to wide range of sectors such as
aeronautical, maritime, disaster relief, rural connectivity, and cellular backhaul.
 Although the rapid growing in satellite traffic [1], we still have a minimal understanding
about the traffic characteristics experienced by satellite systems.
 The main design challenge here is setting the optimal system parameters such as
number of serving beams, beam directions and sizes, and transmit power.
Motivation
[1] Report titled “Satellite Connectivity and Video Markets Survey” by Euroconsult 2019.

3.  Developed a satellite traffic simulator tool based on reliable
datasets that reflect the heterogeneous spatial-temporal traffic
distributions over the coverage of actual beam patterns.
 Proposed a traffic identifying algorithm that defines satellite beam
borders from coverage measurements and associates every user
terminal with its serving beam.
 Developed another algorithm to determine channel coefficients of
user terminals and incorporate the inter-beam interference.
Objectives

4.  The system model diagram including is shown below
 The inputs are three categories of datasets (population (FSS),
aeronautical, and maritime) along with the satellite beam pattern.
 The outputs are traffic and channel matrices.
System Model

5.  Preprocessing Unit is responsible for:
 Eliminating the defective, redundant, and conflict traffic logs.
 Tackling the problem of missing information.
 Extracting users' positions to use them later.
 Processing the satellite beam pattern to delimit the coverage of each
beam.
System Model

6.  Per-beam Traffic Modeling Unit:
 The traffic simulator models user
terminals and associate them into the
serving beams based on the
coordinates.
 The procedure is given Algorithm 1.
 The outputs is a traffic matrix [T] that
contains all the identified user terminals
System Model - Traffic Modeling

7.  Link Budgeting Unit:
 Channel coefficients can be obtained by
running Algorithm 2.
 The output is a per-terminal channel matrix
incorporates the inherent attributes of
satellite channels and the effects of inter-
beam interference.
 [H] is a complex matrix represents the
channel gain and phase for each user.
System Model - Link Budgeting

8.  The traffic simulator can play role in designing and dimensioning satellites.
 It can also be utilized in developing some emerging satellite technologies:
 Beam Hopping.
 Carrier Aggregation.
 Flexible Precoding.
 Smart Gateway Diversity.
 Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).
Potential Directions to Use the Traffic
Simulator

9.  Sample outputs of the traffic simulator are presented.
 Thematic maps to visualize the heterogeneous traffic demands with their
serving satellite beams.
 Two realistic satellite beam patterns are used that are collected by ESA and
provided to the University of Luxembourg in the context of SA FlexPreDem
project.
 They consist of 71 and 100 beams covering Europe.
 The simulation parameters are shown below, where the coverage area spans
from latitude 25° to 80° and longitude -40° to 50°.
Simulation Results

10.  The temporal maritime and aeronautical traffic distributions over the geographic
area located between longitudes 10-15° and latitudes 54-58°.
 Different traffic demand behavior.
Simulation Results

11. Simulation Results
ESA 71-beam pattern covering Europe
with antenna gains and beam borders
Population-based traffic model with
ESA 100-beam pattern

12. Simulation Results
Traffic distributions over the 71-beam
pattern at 4 AM.
Traffic simulator output at 8 AM with the
100-beam pattern.

13. Simulation Results
Traffic simulator output at 12 PM using the
71-beam pattern.
Traffic simulator output at 8 AM using the
100-beam pattern.

14.  Investigate traffic demand behavior over different beam patterns.
 Traffic variations are critical to for satellite resource allocation and traffic load
balancing, as it directly influences the useful system capacity.
Simulation Results
71-beam pattern 100-beam pattern

15.  Investigate traffic variations of 11 beams per hour, with highlighting the hot-
beams, cold-beams, and warm beams.
 This deviation in demand raises a paradoxical scenario when demand is left
unmet in the hot-spots while capacity is left unused in the cold-spots.
 Therefore, utilizing the traffic simulator in such scenarios can assist to flexibly
allocate on-board resources.
Simulation Results

16.  The inter-beam interference is investigated against the number of active beams.
 Five random users have been selected to extract their channel matrix with
considering the 100 beam pattern.
 The inter-beam interference is calculated at users by varying the number of
active beams from 2 to 10 beams.
 Clearly, the inter-beam interference increases with number of active beams.
Simulation Results

17.  A satellite traffic simulator has been developed to model and characterize
data traffic patterns in large-scale environments.
 Traffic demand distribution over Europe is investigated through processing
credible datasets (FSS, aeronautical, and maritime).
 The traffic simulator offers practical models that combines dynamic traffic
usage with realistic satellite beam patterns.
 The traffic simulator can play a crucial role in satellite system design.
 it can be integrated into resource allocation algorithms and future satellite
ventures.
 The implementation of this traffic simulator offers feasible steps to further
extend the considered coverage area with the availability of appropriate
comprehensive datasets.
Conclusions

18. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
Satellite traffic simulator outputs, i.e., instances as MAT files, are made publicly
available at https://github.com/hayder-hussein/SatelliteTraffic-Simulator.
H. Al-Hraishawi, E. Lagunas, and S. Chatzinotas, “Traffic simulator for multibeam
satellite communication systems,” in 10th Advanced Satellite Multimedia Syst.
Conf. and the 16th Signal Process. for Space Commun. Workshop (ASMS/SPSC),
2020, pp. 1–8.