System and Service Volume Simulation Environment S²VSE

With the advent of commercial Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT), envisioned mostly in low Earth orbit (LEO), and an increasing number of regional and global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) as well as augmentation systems, it is necessary to analyse the performance and impact of these systems. The System and Service Volume Simulation Environment (S2VSE) is currently being developed at the Galileo Competence Center (Galileo Kompetenzzentrum, DLR-GK) to support the analysis regarding the performance and capabilities of existing and future GNSS and their impact on various end-users. S2VSE allows the testing and validation of new system designs by simulating their function and architecture. The simulation environment encompasses a system simulator (constellation and orbit generation, system error analysis, coverage analysis, etc.) and a service volume simulator (e.g. user segment analysis, navigation performance, environment and receiver simulation). In both cases, the software environment allows the rapid determination and visualisation of Key Performance Indicator (KPI)s for navigation. Although the focus lies on the European GNSS framework, the simulation can also be configured for any regional or global analysis. S2VSE consists of a number of in-house created Python libraries and modules, which provide the core functionalities for the simulation and analysis to cover a wide range of use cases. This allows, for example, the analysis of different satellite orbits by rapid creation of various single- and multilayer constellations. For the resulting constellations the Dilution-Of-Precision (DOP) can be calculated and visualised. Regarding the service volume it is for instance possible to show the impact of the ionosphere on the signal using one of multiple interchangeable modules (e.g. NeQuickG, Klobuchar). Future developments which are planned for the near future include an enhanced capability to evaluate the impact of high solar activity on GNSS or the ability to create scenarios for the analysis of shadowing and multipath based on multiple data sources.