  The upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) ground-based gamma-ray
observatory will open up our view of the very high energy Universe, offering an
improvement in sensitivity of 5-10 times that of previous experiments.
NectarCAM is one of the proposed cameras for the Medium-Sized Telescopes (MST)
which have been designed to cover the core energy range of CTA, from 100 GeV to
10 TeV. The final camera will be capable of GHz sampling and provide a field of
view of 8 degrees with its 265 modules of 7 photomultiplier each (for a total
of 1855 pixels). In order to validate the performance of NectarCAM, a
partially-equipped prototype has been constructed consisting of only the inner
61-modules. It has so far undergone testing at the integration test-bench
facility in CEA Paris-Saclay (France) and on a prototype of the MST structure
in Adlershof (Germany). To characterize the performance of the prototype, Monte
Carlo simulations were conducted using a detailed model of the 61 module camera
in the CORSIKA/sim_telarray framework. This contribution provides an overview
of this work including the comparison of trigger and readout performance on
test-bench data and trigger and image parameterization performance during
on-sky measurements.
