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arXiv · 2604.04498

An experimental evaluation of satellite constellation emulators

Victor Cionca·Ferenc Szabo·Stanimir Vasilev·Dylan Smyth
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Abstract

Satellite emulation software is essential for research due to the lack of access to physical testbeds. To be useful, emulators must generate observations that are well-aligned with real-world ones, and they must have acceptable resource overheads for setting up and running experiments. This study provides an in-depth evaluation of three open-source emulators: StarryNet, OpenSN, and Celestial. Running them side-by-side and comparing them with real-world measurements from the WetLinks study identifies shortcomings of current satellite emulation techniques as well as promising avenues for research and development.

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Victor Cionca, Ferenc Szabo, Stanimir Vasilev, Dylan Smyth. 2026-04-06. An experimental evaluation of satellite constellation emulators. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04498

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