January 11, 2013 11:56
OS³, the Open Source Satellite Simulator, was developed as a framework for simulating various kinds of satellite-based communication, based on OMNeT++. The objective is to create a platform that makes evaluating satellite communication protocols as easy as possible. OS³ will also be able to automatically import real satellite tracks and weather data to simulate conditions at a certain point in the past or in the future, and offer powerful visualization.
OS³ will enable a comfortable analysis of complex screnarios which may be infeasible to test in reality. Starting anywhere from calculating attenuation losses for earth-bound receivers up to complex mobility scenarios, the variety of topics is only limited by creativity. For example, users will be able to test new protocols or satellite orbits and evaluate the resulting performance pertaining to SNR, bit error rate, packet loss, round trip time, jitter, reachability, and other measures.
Since OS³ will be released under a public license and will include a comprehensive documentation, users always have the possibilty to add customizations. Yet another advantage is that users will be able to share their code with the community and improve the overall quality of OS³ even further. Because OS³ is operating system independent, employing OS³ is feasible for anyone who is restricted to a specific operating system.
