# An Overview of GEO Satellite Communication Simulation Systems
###### Abstract
Among these components, the coverage analysis module and the resource management and scheduling module serve as the core pillars for performance evaluation and strategy validation, making them the most critical components of the entire simulation system. Figure 1: Fundamental components of GEO satellite communication simulation systems. The coverage analysis module is primarily used to determine whether satellite beams can effectively serve ground terminals. It provides key metrics such as service duration, spatial accessibility of beams, and overlapping coverage areas [7]. This module directly impacts the effectiveness of downstream components such as communication link modeling and resource management and scheduling, serving as the spatial foundation for system performance evaluation and strategy validation. Current coverage analysis technologies are relatively mature, which are, with well-established modeling methods and tool support, suitable for most system-level simulations. However, they still face significant challenges in handling highly complex scenarios involving intelligent and flexible beam control. The resource management and scheduling module performs intelligent allocation of resources for multiple services with varying priorities, directly impacting the system's service efficiency and resource utilization. Consequently, resource management and scheduling have emerged as a critical and indispensable core technology. However, with rapidly escalating user demands and increasingly diverse service types, there is a pronounced conflict between the limited availability of resources (such as beams, power, and time slots) and the dynamic nature of service tasks. Traditional resource planning mechanisms based on static configurations and rule-driven strategies lack unified modeling and dynamic scheduling, making it difficult to handle multiple tasks and heterogeneous resources. This limitation results in challenges with resource conflicts, shifting service demands, and changing task priorities, which in turn lead to lower resource utilization rates and diminished communication quality. In summary, a diverse array of GEO satellite communication simulation platforms has been developed to support various aspects such as system-level link analysis, beam coverage evaluation, and resource scheduling. However, a comprehensive summary that critically reviews and compares these platforms is notably lacking. This article aims to fill that gap by providing an in-depth overview of GEO satellite communication simulation systems, detailing coverage analysis, resource management and scheduling, and reviewing typical simulation platforms and tools. Rather than developing a standalone simulation platform, this study proposes a modular and extensible co-simulation framework tailored for GEO satellite systems. It integrates widely adopted tools and unifies geometry-based visibility modeling, co-simulation interfaces, and resource-aware scheduling strategies. This design facilitates cross-layer planning, tool reuse, and adaptation to dynamic satellite communication scenarios. The main contributions of this article are summarized as follows:  
* As a critical component of GEO satellite communication systems, coverage analysis is first examined through its fundamental modeling elements and performance metrics. Four representative coverage analysis methods are then classified and reviewed with respect to their modeling complexity, computational efficiency, and adaptability to dynamic environments. * Resource management and scheduling play a pivotal role in supporting multi-service and highly dynamic applications, while enhancing overall system performance. This study categorizes and presents resource management and scheduling strategies from the perspective of key performance metrics. * To support a comprehensive evaluation of system performance, the most widely used simulation packages are overviewed to assist researchers and engineering practitioners in selecting appropriate simulation tools. The rest is organized as follows.