Non-GEO Constellations Analysis Toolkit 5.0 (NCAT5)

Version 5 of the Non-GEO Constellations Analysis Toolkit (NCAT5) is online, with new tools, datasets and enhancements described in this article. ?NCAT fuses data, analytics and interactive visualizations into factual performance assessments of LEO and MEO satellite constellations.

It is worth noting that several of the enhancements described below were motivated by user feedback. All existing NCAT users automatically have access to the new version.

Speed boost

NCAT5 introduces important enhancements to its IP traffic analysis algorithms (‘heatmap’ tool) leveraging parallel processing to drive millions of calculations faster.

With NCAT5, a separate CPU thread is used to run calculations for each shell. This allows the algorithms to achieve a computing speed that is 3 to 6 times faster than previous versions for country IP traffic analysis, depending on the computer and the simulation.

Since the microprocessors used in almost all new desktop and laptop computers are multi-core, NCAT users should expect important improvements. These are hardly noticed in simulations running with high sampling rates (taking only tens or hundreds of milliseconds per sample), but the acceleration is substantial when running traffic simulations for constellations with thousands of satellites in large countries with tens of thousands hi-res grid cells.

Below are the test results benchmarking the performance of NCAT5.0 versus NCAT4.2 in several countries. NCAT5.0 performs one million “Satellites_x_GroundCells” computations in 40 to 70 milliseconds.

?Sampling rate is defined as the time (milliseconds) it takes the NCAT software to complete timestamped ‘snapshots’ with all calculation results involving the link associations between all country-visible satellites and the country grid cells.

More preset geographies

NCAT5 expanded the support of high-resolution traffic simulations, previously limited only to countries. The number of geographic boundaries and associated population spread data in the database has now grown to 254 countries, territories, regions and subregions.

• 223 countries and territories: Afghanistan, Aland, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, … , ..., Yemen, Zambia.
• 23 subregions: Australia and New Zealand, Caribbean, Central America, Central Asia, Eastern Africa, Eastern Asia, Eastern Europe, Melanesia, Micronesia, Middle Africa, Northern Africa, Northern America, Northern Europe, Polynesias, Seven-seas open ocean sub-units, South America, South-Eastern Asia, Southern Africa, Southern Asia, Southern Europe, Western Africa, Western Asia, Western Europe.
• 8 regions: Africa, Asia & Middle East, Australia Oceania, Central America & Caribbean, Europe, North America, Russia region, South America.

Additionally, through the new ‘Shapes’ tool, NCAT users can define custom boundaries easily (example below).? This further extends the platform capabilities to run granular supply and demand IP traffic simulations using any user-defined geographic boundary.

New ‘Shapes’ tool

‘Shapes’ is a new tool introduced with NCAT5.0 that allows toolkit users to define user terminal (UT) distributions and to modify or build custom geographic boundaries to drive analysis in the ‘heatmap’ tool.?

Users can edit any of the 254 geographies in the database (countries, regions and subregions) or input custom geographic boundaries, such as states or provinces. Users can also draw polygonal shapes manually.

The example below shows how to easily edit the NCAT-provided USA boundaries to drive the traffic analysis only for Continental US (CONUS).

Revamped heatmap tool

An improved ‘heatmap’ tool provides users with full flexibility to define the location and distribution of individual user terminals and associated demand traffic. In previous NCAT versions, the demand distribution of fixed terminals was linked to a configurable range of population density and target capture.

NCAT5 options include:

• Fixed capture of the population in ground cells within a configurable population density range (only option available in previous NCAT versions)
• Differential capture of the population in ground cells within the specified population density range. For example, higher satellite broadband penetration in lower-density cells. Users can define the target penetration rate for the maximum and minimum population targets and NCAT performs linear interpolation based on the cell population density.
• Evenly distributed: ?Users define the total number of UTs and NCAT distributes them uniformly within the territory under study (ignoring the population spread).
• Custom function: Users can input a valid function (formula) driven by the main inputs including service plan, target population density, cell population and density.
• User-defined terminal distribution: Not linked to any database input and defined in the ‘Shapes’ tool.

Below is an example of a fully customized area and user-defined UT distribution for 10 thousand user terminals (UTs) distributed using different criteria in each state of the US southwest. These are set in the ‘Shapes’ tool and used within the ‘heatmap’ tool to conduct IP traffic analysis:

• CA: 4,000 randomly distributed UTs.
• NV: 980 uniformly distributed UTs.
• AZ: 1,000 UTs randomly distributed within a circle area around Phoenix.
• NM: 1,412 uniformly distributed UTs plus 588 randomly distributed within a triangle around Albuquerque.
• CO: 1,500 randomly distributed UTs.
• UT: 466 UTs uniformly distributed within a hexagon, plus 54 UTs with specific locations (via CSV file upload).

Both the distribution of the UTs and a manually drawn shape around the US Southwest are saved in the ‘shapes’ tool and then used to drive a supply-and-demand dynamic calculations the traffic analysis ‘heatmap’ tool. In this example, the UT spread is saved with a 10X multiplier, effectively driving a 100,000-terminal traffic analysis in the heatmap tool.?

New ‘Statistics’ tools

NCAT5.0 added two interactive ‘stats’ tools that interface with large catalogs comprising up-to-date and historical information of over 61 thousand unclassified satellites launched since 1957.

The catalogs that NCAT uses are SATCAT and GCAT, operated and maintained respectively by Dr. T.S. Kelso (CelesTrak.org) and Jonathan McDowell (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). Both Dr. Kelso and McDowell authorized use of the data within the NCAT platform. The NCAT platform automatically updates its database weekly (every Sunday) with datasets from the mentioned sources.

Other NCAT5 enhancements include:

• UI responsiveness: More responsive UI (user interface) when running millions of CPU-demanding calculations concurrently.
• Gateway unselect: Ability to unselect all surveyed gateways at once and add a list of gateway locations via file-upload.
• Satellite ground track: Option to enable and display satellite sub-point paths.

NCAT5 also introduces two new metrics to its traffic analysis tool:

• Visible-satellites coverage area:? The area covered by the territory-visible satellites. This is defined in NCAT as the territory surface area, plus a belt extending the satellite field-of-view radius (footprint), plus 22 kilometers (12 nautical miles) to account for coastal waters.
• ?“Airspace” capacity (different from “visible” capacity). This new metric will likely gain use in the industry given the interest in sovereign constellations and participative networks. ?Airspace capacity is calculated as a moving average to avoid the volatility of overhead capacity calculations, particularly for small territories such as islands (e.g. Hawaii can have many Starlink satellites ‘in view’ but rarely one right overhead)

The Non-GEO Constellations Analysis Toolkit (NCAT) is an assembly of easy-to-use analytics models to assess and benchmark LEO and MEO satellite constellations.?To learn more about NCAT:

• Watch brief videos on?YouTube
• Read use cases here on?Linkedin
• Download the?NCAT white paper
• Visit the NCAT info page on the?Analysys Mason?website
• Contact Analysys Mason