Astrolink for Modeling, Simulation, and Operation of Aerospace Communication Networks

This paper describes the development of new methods and software for the realistic modeling, simulation, and emulation of networked communications in aerospace systems – unifying the highest-fidelity physical models available with detailed network protocol stack models. Astrolink is an implementation of a new framework for simulator integration through lightweight middleware that marries the physical interface models between multiple simulators. Our framework supports flexibly interchanging the network and geospatial astrodynamic simulators in use – and even supports multiple network or geospatial astrodynamic simulators to be used simultaneously for different parts of a system. Astrolink is currently in an early stage, supporting only the ns-3 network simulator and AGI’s Systems Tool Kit (STK) for physics; but, the design explicitly permits easy addition of other simulators, such as Riverbed’s OPNET Modeler, SNT’s QualNet/EXata, ns-2, ESA’s STA, NASA Goddard’s GMAT, SaVi, and others. Astrolink’s extensibility is enabled via a simple protocol that abstracts the physical interface information exported by the simulators and brings this information into a GUI, where a user can bind networking elements with physical assets before initiating the simulation/emulation scenario.