5G Link-Level Simulator for Multicast/Broadcast Services

The evolution toward the promising 5G Multicast-Broadcast Services (5G-MBS) implies multiple simulation stages at different levels to optimize the proposed solutions. This paper presents an open-source link-level simulator (LLS) to facilitate the upcoming studies on 5G-MBS. The proposal combines unicast/multicast/broadcast capabilities over terrestrial and airborne network deployments, link computation for ATSC 3.0 broadcasting, and device-to-device (D2D) communications. The tool is mainly oriented to recreating heterogeneous networks (HetNet) with multiple users under diverse mobility patterns and requesting differentiated unicast and group-oriented services. The implemented channel models support highly directional communications with multiple antennas. The proposal includes estimating channel quality indication for link adaptation based on a tailored Exponential Effective SINR Metric (EESM). The assessment process comprises multiple simulation results and the comparison with Simu5G, an OMNeT++-based model library.