How to Simulate 5G NTN Transmission Paths

+ Keysight System Design

Simulate NTN RF transmission performance and platform mobility

Designing a 5G NTN RF transmission path requires simulating RF transmission performance and platform mobility. This process requires simulating a 5G physical layer transceiver in both the ground terminals and the space-based platform. The simulation software must simulate different RF propagation models and the impacts of platform mobility, like in a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite. A mission-level scenario approach can determine optimal configurations for the best system performance under diverse conditions like geographic and atmospheric characteristics, the satellite constellation, the non-terrestrial network (NTN) configuration, and user equipment (UE) use cases.

To complete an NTN a system design, the system design engineer employs a flexible new radio (NR) source configuration tailored to various NTN deployments. The system includes a versatile NR receiver that intelligently compensates for the delay and Doppler effects, delivering accurate and reliable results. With a comprehensive set of measurements for both the transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx), antenna models including phased arrays, and an NTN channel model, a system design provides a comprehensive understanding of the NTN ecosystem.

5G NTN simulation and modeling solution

Keysight System Design provides a full end-to-end physical layer system simulation of NTN deployments, a channel model, and an advanced transceiver as specified in 3GPP release 17. The NTN channel model includes all the propagation characteristics to model satellite links and models large path delay and large-frequency Doppler shift, with satellite trajectory visualization.

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