Day objective — a repeatable NTN planning workflow that ends in a professional, customer-ready planning report.
NTN Planning Methodology
The end-to-end planning workflow — and the constraints that shape every orbit and payload decision.
- End-to-end workflow — requirements → orbit / payload → coverage → link budget → core/RAN config → mobility → capacity → KPI / acceptance → report
- Requirements capture — service, coverage, capacity & latency; UE / service profiles
- Orbit selection strategy (LEO vs. MEO vs. GEO) & transparent vs. regenerative payload choice
- Constraints — commercial, spectrum / regulatory & integration
NTN Coverage Planning
Footprint, beams and the elevation-angle trade-off that sets slant range, delay and margin.
- Footprint & spot-beam planning — earth-fixed vs. earth-moving beam design
- Service-link & feeder-link coverage — gateway placement & visibility
- Minimum elevation angle & its effect on slant range, delay & link margin
- Cell-edge evaluation & overlap for service continuity (rural, maritime, aviation, disaster)
Link-Budget Fundamentals
The link budget decides whether a given orbit, payload and terminal can deliver the target service. Participants build it term by term.
- Transmit — EIRP = Tx power + antenna gain − losses
- Path — FSPL, atmospheric / gaseous loss, rain fade (ITU-R P.618), scintillation, polarization loss, implementation margin
- Receive — antenna gain, system noise temperature, noise figure, G/T figure of merit
- Quality — C/N, C/N₀, Eb/N₀ and SINR; required Eb/N₀ for the target MODCOD & BLER
- Availability margin for the target service-availability %
Worked Example — LEO Downlink to Handheld (S-band)
Built on the TR 38.821 methodology. Drag the elevation angle — slant range, FSPL, C/N₀ and SNR recompute live with exact math.
- Editable link-budget calculator — LEO-600 S-band handheld downlink; change EIRP, elevation, band, bandwidth
- Worked example, line by line — C/N₀ = 66.1 dB-Hz, and why 5 MHz fails but 500 kHz closes
EIRP, G/T & margins are TR 38.821-style planning placeholders, not a specific operator’s figures — but every derived value (d, FSPL, C/N₀, SNR) is computed exactly from the inputs above. C/N₀ is the bandwidth-independent headline metric; SNR scales with the reference bandwidth you choose.
LEO / MEO / GEO Link-Budget Design
What controls the margin in each orbit — and which direction (UL or DL, feeder or service) usually dominates.
- LEO — short slant range & low FSPL, but high Doppler, short dwell & frequent handover; UL often limited by handheld power
- MEO — balanced delay / coverage; satellite diversity & gateway-visibility planning; broadband example
- GEO — highest FSPL & delay but a fixed, large footprint; rain-fade & availability dominate (Ku/Ka); VSAT / broadcast / delay-tolerant example
- For each orbit — uplink & downlink, feeder-link & service-link budgets, and the controlling margin
Capacity, Frequency Reuse & KPIs
Dimensioning the beam/satellite/gateway, and the KPI acceptance criteria a customer signs off against.
- Capacity — beam / satellite / gateway capacity; frequency reuse & beam isolation; spectrum reuse factor
- Dimensioning — user-density & traffic-model prep; peak-hour dimensioning; QoS / slice-based capacity
| KPI domain | Example KPIs | Acceptance intent |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | RACH success rate, PDU-session setup success | UE attaches reliably over the NTN link |
| Retainability | Drop rate, session continuity | Service sustained during beam / sat changes |
| Mobility | Beam-HO & satellite-HO success rate | Handover works under constellation motion |
| Latency / throughput | One-way delay, jitter, DL/UL throughput | Meets service profile (incl. high-RTT) |
| Link / coverage | Link-budget margin, C/N₀, edge coverage % | Margin holds at target availability |
Planning Tools & Simulation Workflow
The open-source toolchain that automates ephemeris, coverage, delay/Doppler and the link budget — and produces the report.
- Ephemeris / TLE handling (Skyfield / Orekit); coverage & pass simulation
- Delay & Doppler simulation; Python-based link-budget automation
- System-level — ns-3 / 5G-LENA NTN; GIS-based coverage visualization
- Reporting — planning-report template preparation
Hands-on Lab 5 — Link Budget & Pass Prediction
Plan coverage and close budgets like a real NTN engineer — reproduce a TR 38.821 reference link budget, derive the coverage geometry and its governing constraint, and produce a real 24-hour pass schedule.
Link Budget & Pass Prediction (Planning)
⚡- 1Reproduce a TR 38.821 §6.1.3 reference link budget (SC-case) to ≤ 0.06 dB; vary elevation & band
- 2Derive coverage geometry — beam footprint, cells, continuity, gateway visibility — and flag the binding constraint
- 3Predict a real 24-hour satellite pass schedule with Skyfield/SGP4 on live TLEs
- 4Estimate the minimum constellation size from the longest coverage gap
Day 5 Assessment
Close the link and plan the system — FSPL/C-N0/G-T, the worked LEO example, orbit design, capacity/KPIs and the open-source toolchain. 42 questions; every number computed, not fabricated.