Satellite Network Protocol Simulation And Visualization Approaches

As the satellite network technology develops, the research work of satellite network protocol technologies becomes the focus of the satellite network study. Due to its advantages of low prices, convenient for achieving and short researching cycles, the network simulator has become one of the most popular tools in the filed of study satellite network protocols. However there is no mature simulation model in the field of satellite network transport layer protocol study yet, nor does there exist any tool to achieve the visualization goal of the simulation results of satellite network transport layer protocols. These have limited the development of the research work using simulation approaches.In this article, we firstly introduce some technologies, such as the satellite technology, the satellite network technology, the network simulation technology and the Scientific Visualization technology. After that we focus on discussing two questions below: 1) how to design and build the satellite simulation framework that is fit for studying the satellite network transport layer protocols, and 2) how to design a software to achieve the goal of visualize the simulation results, and provide the basic approaches to solve them.Using the NS simulation tool, we build the satellite simulation framework, which make it possible to simulate some basic satellite network elements such as satellite orbits, satellite datalink, satellite link handoff etc. The satellite simulation framework also provides models to represent the influences of the space environment to the satellite network, especially to the transport layer of the network. Users can design their own satellite network simulation model based on the satellite simulation framework to study transport layer protocols.Since the simulation result that is created by the satellite network simulation model will be saved in a file in the form of records, it is not easy to observe the simulation results intuitively. So we design software to visualize the simulation results, making it easy for observing .In the article, we discuss various visualization methods that depict the running of satellite network transport layer protocols and provide software to achieve the goal of visualization using MFC.