Development of a testing emulation platform for the validation and design of 5G satellite services

5G networks are designed to support different kinds of IP based services, allowing QoS-oriented portions of the network (called slices) to best meet each individual service requirements. Even though very challenging use-cases and services are being defined (namely eMBB, URLLC and mMTC), web browsing is still expected to represent a major part of 5G networks traffic. In this context, the inclusion of Satellite segments in 5G networks is gaining more and more interest, with 3GPP actively defining Non-Terrestrial Networks in the latest 5G specifications. In fact, new 5G services can exploit SatCom intrinsic characteristics such as the large coverage and ubiquity. A testing and validation emulation platform can be very beneficial in supporting the design of web-based 5G services, in a network which includes multiple heterogeneous backhaul links (terrestrial and satellite). This paper describes such an emulation platform, on top of which an accurate web-traffic generator is defined, implemented and validated. The goal of the emulation platform and its capabilities is to support the design and validation of SatCom based 5G architectures.