satellite constellation visualization

Celestri modelled in SaVi

I've created and run a number of simulations of satellite constellations using SaVi, the Satellite Visualization software that was originally written at the Geometry Center. I contributed to SaVi while studying at the Centre for Communication Systems Research, and now you can run SaVi, too.

The SaVi 1.2 releases include the constellation simulation scripts I've written, as well as enhanced resizeable coverage and fisheye displays. For real-time 3D visualizations, SaVi can use Geomview, also originally written at The Geometry Center. These interactive java animations and renderings of commercial systems will quickly give you a primitive idea of what Geomview can offer.

Download and build SaVi 1.2.1a (released 24 June 2002). SaVi has been run on Linux, Solaris and Irix. SaVi development is stored in the SaVi SourceForge repository. There's a SaVi developers mailing list.

Latest SaVi development code (13 January 2003) in SourceForge adds many more features, and is worth trying. The number of features and bugfixes probably warrants a 1.2.2 release.

There's a very low-volume SaVi users mailing list - email savi-users-request@eim.surrey.ac.uk to be added to or removed from that list.

Any use of SaVi images should credit The Geometry Center. Academic work showcasing SaVi includes:

• L. Wood, Internetworking with satellite constellations, PhD thesis, University of Surrey, June 2001.
• L. Wood, G. Pavlou and B. G. Evans, Managing diversity with handover to provide classes of service in satellite constellation networks, Proceedings of the 19th AIAA International Communication Satellite Systems Conference (ICSSC '01), vol. 3, session 35, no. 194, Toulouse, France, April 2001.
• L. Wood, G. Pavlou and B. G. Evans, Effects on TCP of routing strategies in satellite constellations, Special issue on Satellite-Based Internet Technology and Services, IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 172-181, March 2001.
• T. R. Henderson and R. Katz, On Distributed, Geographic-Based Packet Routing for LEO Satellite Networks, Proceedings of IEEE Globecom 2000, San Francisco, California, November 2000.
• T. R. Henderson and R. Katz, Network Simulation for LEO Satellite Networks, Proceedings of the 18th AIAA International Communications Satellite Systems Conference (ICSSC), Oakland, California, April 2000.
• I. El Khamlichi and L. Franck, Study of Two Policies for Implementing Routing Algorithms in Satellite Constellations,Proceedings of the 18th AIAA International Communications Satellite Systems Conference (ICSSC), Oakland, California, April 2000.
• T. R. Henderson, Networking over next-generation satellite systems, PhD dissertation, Computer Science Division, University of California at Berkeley, Fall 1999.
• L. Wood, H. Cruickshank and Z. Sun, Supporting group applications via satellite constellations with multicast, Proceedings of the Sixth IEE Conference on Telecommunications, pp. 190-194, Edinburgh, April 1998.
• G. Comparetto and R. Ramirez, Trends in Mobile Satellite Technology, IEEE Computer, vol. 37 no. 2, pp. 44-52, February 1997.

SaVi requires a unix-like environment to run. For a satellite constellation design package that runs natively in Windows, there's AVM Dynamics' Symmetric Constellations family. Download their SC Modeler demonstration and give it a try. The last time I checked, the demonstration only did rosettes (and the even-further-cut-down Lite demonstration was far too limited to gain a good idea of the full capabilities), but it was fun to play with. You may also wish to look at MultiSatSim, Omni, SOAP, or the Satellite Toolkit, whose add-on modules can provide three-dimensional visualisation. But those commercial packages are rather expensive, whereas SaVi and the Geomview rendering engine are completely free and open-source.

Lloyd Wood (L.Wood@ee.surrey.ac.uk)
this page last updated 13 January 2003