Satellite Operations Network Infrastructure and Costing (SONIC) Toolkit
The SONIC framework greatly simplifies the analytics of managing satellite missions, ground sites and Satellite Operations Centers for commercial, civil, and military agencies. Until now, there has been no easy-to-use decision support tool for satellite network architectural cost and operational effectiveness analysis. SONIC provides users easy access to complex analytics, advanced simulation and scheduling techniques, user customizable graphical reporting, and accurate 3D visualization – all from a streamlined user interface.
- Simplify the visualization and analysis of satellite telemetry, tracking, and commanding networks
- Model satellite missions and antenna conjunctions
- Simulate network schedule and operation center loading
- Allocate DDT&E, operations, sustainment, and WAN costs
- Provide metrics that integrate operations with costs
We model satellite physics, network elements, allocations, and cost to:
- Identify requirements that drive costs
- Find network chokepoints and risk drivers to rank the impact and criticality of individual network elements
- Assess different network capitalization strategies
- Vary network configurations to optimize for cost against criteria including utilization, fault tolerance, data loss, latency, agility, and responsiveness
- Calculate the price per support for reimbursable missions
- Determine staffing levels for ground sites and operations centers
- Configure missions and network elements once; conjunction results are maintained in data files for reuse
- Simulation benchmark: 100 spacecraft across 20 antenna in under an hour
- Different network allocation strategies do not require conjunction recalculations
- Report engine provides access to over 100 rapid standard tables, charts, and graphs
- Export capability enables additional post-processing of data
- Knowledge and data configuration management through codification of network users and network architecture
Create a high level model of your satellite network architecture comprising missions, constellations, antennas, ground sites and SOCs
- Import TLEs or create custom ELSETS
- Create antennas including obscura and RF limitations
- Capture relationships between antennas, ground Sites, and SOCs
Calculate conjunctions of all missions against all antennas across the simulation timeframe.
- NORAD-approved SDP4/SGP4 satellite propagator
- Calculate visibilities between antenna and spacecraft based on orbital dynamics, geographic limitations, and RF constraints
- Results saved into individual files for easy reuse
- Stationkeeping and other satellite control options available
Simulate network allocation via a priority-based algorithm to schedule missions across compatible antennas to understand mission de-confliction, antenna utilization and SOC loading.
- Operates on conjunction files to define architectural options
- User-defined options for prioritizing allocation schema for satellites onto antennas and ground sites
- Classical visualization for contact scheduling, blind orbits, antenna downtime, and potential for data loss/recorder saturation
- Identify bandwidth and SOC loading
- Monte-Carlo processes to quantify risks from antenna availability
Cost Estimating Relationships (CERs) allocate costs to missions, constellations, sites and SOCs
- CERs account for DDT&E, operations, sustainment, and WAN costs
- Cost reimbursable, fixed price service level, fixed price per support, and “should cost” models included
- Full cost, marginal cost, and reimbursable pricing options
- Cost per contact second, cost per contact, and 14 other metrics
Fuse cost and simulation data to visualize and assess network cost and operational effectiveness, fault tolerance, and associated drivers
- Requirements drivers for performance and cost
- Marginal cost to ‘buy down” risks
- Most cost effective sites/most critical sites
- Impact of different pairings of missions and sites on performance, costs, and risks
- Value and ROI of technology initiatives
- 3D visualization of mission orbits and antenna contacts