A satellite mobility model for Qualnet network simulations

Because of the near ubiquitous communication available to network nodes beneath a satellites footprint, satellite network technology has enjoyed a recent and substantial increase in interest from academia, government, and commercial sectors. However, the benefit resulting from being beneath the satellite footprint comes at the cost of a substantial propogation delay, as well as other challenging network characteristics. To study networking over satellites, researchers need a network simulation tool that is capable of modeling existing and proposed satellite networks. This paper addresses the network modeling problem by adding an open source satellite mobility model (SatMob) suitable for Low/Medium Earth Orbit (LEO/MEO) satellites to Qualnet network simulation tool. We perform a basic set of experiments commonly found in network research by using an existing mobility model and SatMob. Our results indicate that our model yields an appreciable improvement over an existing Qualnet approach.