Abstract: Large-scale constellation networks have the characteristics of complicated structureand dynamic topology. Thosecommercial or open-source simulation platforms, such as OPNET, QUALNET and NS3,are not only unable to effectively simulate the real data transmission in large-scale networks, but also difficult to support fast conversion from simulation implementation to target platform implementation.Aiming at the problemsabove, we studied and developed a real-time network simulation test system named SiT4NET.Firstly,SiT4NET usescontainer technique to solve the problem of large-scale network node deployment with limited resourceson the basis of ensuring nodes’ independence, thus improving the resource utilization of the simulation system. Secondly, the packet transmission between nodes based on data units and the mechanism for requesting/retrieving system-level data units are innovatively proposed to provide a strong foundation for real-time network simulation. And thirdly, through the standard high-level protocol interface, internal packet format andreconfigurable mechanism of packet processing, SiT4NET reduces the complexity of conversion between the simulation implementation of the protocol and the target platform. Finally, by setting up the same satellite network environment on SiT4NET and OPNET platforms, setting up multiple groups of simulation scenarios, comparing and analyzing the results, it shows that this method can meet the performance requirements of large-scale satellite networks.

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