Simulative Comparison of DVB-S2X/RCS2 and 3GPP 5G NR NTN Technologies in a Geostationary Satellite Scenario

Abstract: Comparison between existing, well-established satellite technologies, like the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) satellite specifications, and the emerging Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specified 5th Generation New Radio (5G NR) Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) is an actively discussed topic in the satellite industry standardization groups. This article presents a thorough performance comparison between DVB Second Generation Satellite Extensions (DVBS2X) and Return Channel via Satellite 2nd Generation (DVBRCS2), and NR NTN in a Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellite scenario, using system-level simulators (SLS) for evaluation, namely Satellite Network Simulator 3 (SNS3) and ALIX 5G (TN-)NTN SLS, built on the same Network Simulator 3 (ns-3) platform. With the satellite system geometry, beam layout, and link budget aligned to use the 3GPP NTN example parameterization for a fair comparison between DVB and NR NTN, the results show that DVB-S2X consistently achieves higher spectral efficiency than the NR Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH) on the forward user link. In contrast, on the return link, the NR Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) demonstrates better spectral efficiency at the system level. The SLS results incorporate link-level performance, obtained through link-level simulations (LLS) for different modulation and coding schemes (MCS) and waveforms supported by each technology.