A parallel discrete event simulation engine for the low-earth-orbit satellite constellation networks

Low-Earth-Orbit satellite constellation networks (LEO-SCN) can provide low-cost, large-scale, flexible coverage wireless communication services. High dynamics and large topological sizes characterize LEO-SCN. Protocol development and application testing of LEO-SCN are challenging to carry out in a natural environment. Simulation platforms are a more effective means of technology demonstration. Currently available simulators have a single function and limited simulation scale. There needs to be a simulator for full-featured simulation. In this paper, we apply the parallel discrete-event simulation technique to the simulation of LEO-SCN to support large-scale complex system simulation at the packet level. To solve the problem that single-process programs cannot cope with complex simulations containing numerous entities, we propose a parallel mechanism and algorithms LP-NM and LP-YAWNS for synchronization. In the experiment, we use ns-3 to verify the acceleration ratio and efficiency of the above algorithms. The results show that our proposed mechanism can provide parallel simulation engine support for the LEO-SCN.