ArrayLink Simulator

Webpage | Paper | Slides | Poster | Demo

Conventional satellite ground stations rely on a single large parabolic dish. ArrayLink replaces it with 16 distributed phased-array panels spanning a km-scale aperture — placing LEO/MEO satellites in the radiative near-field where the line-of-sight channel supports spatial multiplexing across independent streams, delivering throughput that no single dish can match.

This repository contains the simulator and hardware experiment results for the INFOCOM 2026 paper.

Installation

Requires mamba or micromamba.

git clone https://github.com/ucsdwcsng/ArrayLink.git
cd ArrayLink
mamba env create -f environment.yml
mamba activate arraylink

Quick Start

from arraylink.channel import compute_channel_matrix, mimo_region_bounds
from arraylink.array_geometry import build_ground_station

# MIMO feasibility range for the ArrayLink aperture at 28 GHz
lam = 3e8 / 28e9
r_min, r_max = mimo_region_bounds(d_tx=2000, d_rx=1.0, wavelength=lam)
print(f"MIMO region: {r_min/1e3:.0f} – {r_max/1e3:.0f} km")

# Build the ArrayLink ground station (16 panels (each 32x32), √2 km × 1 km aperture)
gnd, _ = build_ground_station(mode="arraylink", subarray_shape=(32, 32),
                               element_spacing=lam/2/1e3, Nx=4, Ny=4,
                               Lx=1.4142, Ly=1.0)
print(f"Total antenna elements: {len(gnd)}")   # → 16384

Reproducing Paper Figures

Run any figure script from the repo root:

Script	Figure	Description
scripts/fig02_parabolic_gain.py	Fig. 2	Parabolic dish beam pattern vs scan angle
scripts/fig04_gain_vs_arrays.py	Fig. 4	Array gain vs number of panels
scripts/fig06_mimo_boundaries.py	Fig. 6	Theoretical MIMO region boundaries
scripts/fig09_beampattern_sim.py	Fig. 9	UPA/ArrayLink positions and beam pattern
scripts/fig10_hardware_validation.py	Fig. 10	Hardware experiment validation
scripts/fig11_2d_beampattern.py	Fig. 11	2D beam pattern heatmap
scripts/fig12_mimo_dof.py	Fig. 12	MIMO degrees of freedom vs distance
scripts/fig13_throughput.py	Fig. 13	Throughput comparison

# Generate all figures (outputs to paper_figures/; ~2–3 min total)
for s in scripts/fig*.py; do python $s; done

Fig. 11 interactive mode — install plotly first, then run with --interactive:

mamba install -c conda-forge plotly
python scripts/fig11_2d_beampattern.py --interactive

Fig. 10 hardware curves — place hardware_metrics.pkl at data/hardware_metrics.pkl (theory and simulation curves render without it; see data/README.md).

Running Tests

pytest tests/ -v

Package Structure

arraylink/
  channel.py        # Channel matrix, singular values, MIMO bounds, spectral efficiency
  array_geometry.py # UPA, center-dense, and uniform array placement
  beamforming.py    # DC weights, beam pattern, array/dish gain formulas
  utils.py          # Coordinate transforms, decibel helpers, config loading
scripts/            # One script per paper figure
configs/            # YAML parameter files (arraylink_1km.yaml, upa_baseline.yaml)
tests/              # Unit tests (42) + smoke tests (8)
data/               # Hardware experiment data (see data/README.md)

Key Parameters

Parameter	Value
Carrier frequency	28 GHz
Panels	16 (4×4, center-dense over √2 km × 1 km)
Elements per panel	32×32 = 1024 (λ/2 spacing)
Dish aperture efficiency	60%
MIMO threshold τ	0.1 (σ₂/σ₁ > τ for spatial multiplexing)

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.

Copyright 2025 Rohith Reddy Vennam, Luke Wilson, Ish Kumar Jain, Dinesh Bharadia
UC San Diego Wireless Communications Sensing and Networking Group (WCSNG)

Citation

If you use this simulator, please cite:

@article{vennam2025satellites,
  title   = {Satellites are closer than you think: A near field MIMO approach for Ground stations},
  author  = {Vennam, Rohith Reddy and Wilson, Luke and Jain, Ish Kumar and Bharadia, Dinesh},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.09374},
  year    = {2025},
}

For more details refer webpage: wcsng.ucsd.edu/arraylink/