A System Simulator for 5G Non-Terrestrial Network Evaluations

3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is working on the specifications related to the 5G satellite component, i.e., 5G Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN). 5G NTN specifications can be used to build different spaceborne or airborne 5G systems. This article presents a 5G NTN extension to an open-source Network Simulator 3 (ns-3) and its 5G extension (5G LENA). The objective is to use the resulting System Level Simulator (SLS) in 3GPP standardization to evaluate different system concepts and parameterizations.