Challenges in simulating LEO satellite networks like Starlink#

Wayne Reiher (UoA)

• Why: Not the PM's domain, but a genuinely interesting emulation technique: reproducing LEO's time-varying latency, load, and handover dynamics on real physical hardware at ~150 devices — a problem most people solve badly in software simulators. The approach (continuously driving netem and token-bucket parameters from an orbital model) is a reusable pattern for testing any time-varying transport path, and LEO is increasingly a real WAN-transit option to reason about.
• What: The University of Auckland's work extending an existing hardware-based GEO/MEO satellite simulator to LEO constellations, and the technical challenges of doing so on an extensive physical setup of around 150 devices. (from abstract only)
• How: Continuous real-time updates to netem delay and token-bucket-filter rate parameters to replicate the changing latencies and data rates a ground station experiences as satellites move, clients hand over, and inter-satellite links switch — as opposed to the static latencies/rates that make GEO and MEO easy to simulate.
• Where applicable: Test-lab technique; adoption requires a physical emulation rig, so it's academic-lab-scale rather than something to lift directly, but the parameter-driving methodology transfers to any hardware path-emulation setup.