BISANTE - Traffic evaluation tool for broadband satellite networks

This paper presents the current research works carried out in the BISANTE project funded within the European ESPRIT programme. The objective of this project is to develop simulation methodology and framework with a prototype workbench which can be used to evaluate broadband and Internet traffic over satellites at network level. The framework will include traffic models, satellite constellations and network models and protocol architecture models. The simulation workbench is based on an implementation and integration of different modules based on this model. The capability of the simulation workbench is demonstrated by using it to study performance and Quality of Service (QoS) with simulation scenarios taking the Iridium and Teledesic satellite constellations as examples. The project is still in its early stage that only prototype of the workbench and initial results are reported in this paper at this stage. The simulations consider traffic and constellation scenarios. The traffic scenario includes Internet applications such as web surf and file transfer using HTTP and FTP. The network scenario includes the Iridium and Teledesic constellations. The network protocol architectures are also taken into account including typical MAC protocols and the Internet protocols. Real-time voice and video applications are also been considered and will be studied in the future. The simulation results can give good indications on performance and QoS provisioning to applications for the given simulation scenarios and can be useful to network dimensioning and traffic management.