Network Evaluation and Planning for Large-scale Low Earth Orbit Satellite Constellation Networks

Large-scale low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation network (LS-LEOSCN) has been developing very rapidly benefiting from the global coverage, high throughput and low latency. This paper focuses on the following two questions, that is how to design a LS-LEOSCN or optimize a given LS-LEOSCN. Three key metrics to evaluate the LS-LEOSCN performance, namely the network coverage (NC), system throughput (ST) and round trip delay (RTT), are analyzed. Further, satellite constellation deployment (SCD), gateway station deployment (GSD) and radio resource management (RRM) are analyzed and optimized in improving the system performance. Finally, an integrated network evaluation and planning (NEaP) platform for LS-LEOSCN, named LEO-NEaP, is designed and implemented to validate the proposed network planning techniques. Simulation results show that the designed LEO-NEaP can support the evaluation and planning for LS-LEOSCN.