OpenSatCom

Open-source Python toolkit for satellite communications engineering.

Maps antenna + RF chain + propagation + mission time-series to link margin & capacity, with reproducible, trade-study-ready outputs.

Features

• Snapshot link budgets — EIRP, G/T, C/N0, Eb/N0, margin in one call
• Composite propagation — FSPL + ITU-R P.618 rain + P.676 gas + scintillation
• DVB-S2 modem — 28 built-in ModCods, analytic BER curves, hysteresis ACM
• Multi-beam payload — BeamSet, SINR/C(N+I) maps, interference modeling
• Mission simulation — Tier 1 (single-sat), Tier 2 (multi-sat handover), Tier 3 (network traffic)
• Trade studies — DOE (LHS/factorial/random), batch evaluation, Pareto extraction
• Beautiful visualizations — Plotly interactive + Seaborn statistical plots
• HTML reports — Standalone reports with embedded interactive charts
• CLI interface — opensatcom run, mission, beammap, doe, batch, pareto

Installation

pip install opensatcom

For development:

pip install -e ".[dev]"

For Jupyter notebooks:

pip install -e ".[notebooks]"

Quickstart

from opensatcom.core.models import *
from opensatcom.antenna.parametric import ParametricAntenna
from opensatcom.propagation import FreeSpacePropagation
from opensatcom.link.engine import DefaultLinkEngine
from opensatcom.geometry.slant import slant_range_m

# Define terminals
satellite = Terminal("GEO-Sat", 0.0, 0.0, 35_786_000.0)
ground = Terminal("Ground", 38.9, -77.0, 0.0, system_noise_temp_k=290.0)

# Build link inputs
link_inputs = LinkInputs(
    tx_terminal=satellite,
    rx_terminal=ground,
    scenario=Scenario(
        name="Ku-DL", direction="downlink",
        freq_hz=12e9, bandwidth_hz=36e6,
        polarization="RHCP", required_metric="ebn0_db", required_value=5.0,
    ),
    tx_antenna=ParametricAntenna(gain_dbi=36.0),
    rx_antenna=ParametricAntenna(gain_dbi=38.0),
    propagation=FreeSpacePropagation(),
    rf_chain=RFChainModel(tx_power_w=100.0, tx_losses_db=1.5, rx_noise_temp_k=75.0),
)

# Evaluate
engine = DefaultLinkEngine()
range_m = slant_range_m(0.0, 35_786_000.0, 30.0)
result = engine.evaluate_snapshot(30.0, 0.0, range_m, link_inputs, PropagationConditions())
print(f"Margin: {result.margin_db:.2f} dB")

Architecture

src/opensatcom/
├── core/          # Datamodels, protocols, units, constants
├── antenna/       # PAM wrappers, parametric, cosine, coupling
├── rf/            # RF chain, cascaded stages
├── propagation/   # FSPL, ITU-R rain/gas/scintillation, composite
├── geometry/      # Slant range, elevation/azimuth
├── modem/         # DVB-S2 ModCods, analytic BER, ACM policy
├── link/          # Snapshot link budget engine
├── payload/       # BeamSet, BeamMap, multi-beam interference
├── world/         # WorldSim Tier 1/2/3, traffic, schedulers
├── trades/        # DOE, batch runner, Pareto extraction
├── viz/           # Plotly + Seaborn visualizations
├── reports/       # HTML report generation
├── io/            # Artifact I/O (parquet, yaml, json)
└── cli/           # CLI entry points

CLI Usage

# Snapshot link evaluation
opensatcom run config.yaml

# Time-series mission simulation
opensatcom mission config.yaml

# Multi-beam capacity map
opensatcom beammap config.yaml

# Design of experiments
opensatcom doe config.yaml -n 500 --method lhs

# Batch evaluation
opensatcom batch cases.parquet --parallel

# Pareto extraction
opensatcom pareto results.parquet --x cost_usd --y throughput_p50

# Generate report
opensatcom report results.parquet --format html

Tutorial Notebooks

Notebook	Topic	Colab
01_quickstart.ipynb	End-to-end snapshot link budget
02_mission_simulation.ipynb	Time-series mission simulation
03_multibeam_payload.ipynb	Multi-series capacity analysis
04_propagation_models.ipynb	Propagation model comparison
05_trade_studies.ipynb	DOE + Pareto workflow

Testing

pytest tests/ -v              # All tests
pytest tests/ -m golden       # Golden regression tests only
pytest tests/ -m integration  # Integration tests only
ruff check src/ tests/        # Lint
mypy src/opensatcom/          # Type check

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/my-feature)
3. Write tests for new functionality
4. Ensure all tests pass (pytest tests/)
5. Submit a pull request

MCP server

Expose the link and trade tools to MCP-compatible agents (install the mcp extra):

pip install "opensatcom[mcp]"
opensatcom mcp serve

Client configuration:

{"mcpServers": {"opensatcom": {"command": "opensatcom", "args": ["mcp", "serve"]}}}

Six tools: link_validate_config, link_snapshot, trade_doe, trade_batch, trade_pareto, report_render_snapshot. The surface follows the family convention in APAB's mcp-conventions.md.

Citation

If you use OpenSatCom in your research or publications, please cite:

@software{opensatcom,
  author       = {Hodge, John},
  title        = {OpenSatCom: Open-Source Satellite Communications Engineering Toolkit},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {GitHub},
  url          = {https://github.com/jman4162/opensatcom},
  version      = {0.6.0},
  license      = {MIT}
}

License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.