  Assume that a multibeam satellite communication system is designed from
scratch to serve a particular area with maximal resource utilization and to
satisfactorily accommodate the expected traffic demand. The main design
challenge here is setting optimal system parameters such as number of serving
beams, beam directions and sizes, and transmit power. This paper aims at
developing a tool, multibeam satellite traffic simulator, that helps addressing
these fundamental challenges, and more importantly, provides an understanding
to the spatial-temporal traffic pattern of satellite networks in large-scale
environments. Specifically, traffic demand distribution is investigated by
processing credible datasets included three major input categories of
information: (i) population distribution for broadband Fixed Satellite Services
(FSS), (ii) aeronautical satellite communications, and (iii) vessel
distribution for maritime services. This traffic simulator combines this
three-dimensional information in addition to time, locations of terminals, and
traffic demand. Moreover, realistic satellite beam patterns have been
considered in this work, and thus, an algorithm has been proposed to delimit
the coverage boundaries of each satellite beam, and then compute the
heterogeneous traffic demand at the footprint of each beam. Furthermore,
another algorithm has been developed to capture the inherent attributes of
satellite channels and the effects of multibeam interference. Data-driven
modeling for satellite traffic is crucial nowadays to design innovative
communication systems, e.g., precoding and beam hopping, and to devise
efficient resource management algorithms.
