Testbed Design and Performance Emulation for Satellite-Terrestrial Integrated Networks

Area of Science:

• Communications Engineering
• Network Systems
• Satellite Technology

Background:

• Satellite-terrestrial integrated networks (STINs) offer extended coverage for remote IoT and sensor telemetry but face complex evaluation challenges due to dynamic network conditions.
• Heterogeneous mobility, channel variations, resource constraints, and control-plane dynamics complicate STIN performance analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a software-based modular testbed and performance-emulation framework for evaluating STIN strategies.
• To facilitate traceable performance evaluation of STINs for remote sensing, IoT, and emergency communication services.

Main Methods:

• Developed a modular testbed integrating scenario generation, model-driven data processing, replaceable algorithm engines, and scheduler-based execution control.
• Modeled terrestrial, UAV, and LEO satellite entities with link-budget abstraction, access control, mobility-aware handover, and traffic management.
• Employed a lightweight emulation model parameterized by NTN and link-budget assumptions for strategy evaluation.

Main Results:

• Identified key tradeoffs between access, handover, routing, and scheduling strategies in STINs.
• Demonstrated the framework's sensitivity to workload, mobility, outage, demand, and model parameters.
• Revealed performance implications of different STIN strategies under various conditions.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework enables traceable and systematic evaluation of STIN strategies.
• Supports the optimization of STINs for remote sensor networks, sensing-data backhaul, and remote-IoT services.
• Provides a valuable tool for understanding and improving the performance of integrated satellite and terrestrial networks.