DSNS: The Deep Space Network Simulator

The Deep Space Network Simulator (DSNS) is an event-based network simulator designed for efficient simulation of satellite networks and interplanetary communication, to facilitate protocol testing and development. The paper introducing it can be found on arXiv here.

When using DSNS, please cite the following paper: "DSNS: The Deep Space Network Simulator". The BibTeX entry is given below:

@inproceedings{smailesDSNS2025,
    author = {Smailes, Joshua and Futera, Filip and K{\"o}hler, Sebastian and Birnbach, Simon and Strohmeier, Martin and Martinovic, Ivan},
    title = {{DSNS}: {The Deep Space Network Simulator}},
    booktitle={2025 Security for Space Systems (3S)},
    year={2025},
    organization={IEEE}
}

Papers and projects which have used DSNS:

• "KeySpace: Enhancing Public Key Infrastructure for Interplanetary Networks" (2025): https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10963
• "Secure and Scalable Rerouting in LEO Satellite Networks" (2025): https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10173

Note

To add your project to this list, or to merge your contributions with DSNS, feel free to submit a pull request.

Documentation

Further documentation can be found here: https://ssloxford.github.io/DSNS/

Installation

DSNS is distributed on PyPI, and can be installed using pip:

pip3 install dsns

However, many use cases will require modifications to the source code. For this reason, we recommend installation from source, using the --editable flag to ensure the code can be updated without requiring reinstallation. This can be done as follows:

git clone https://github.com/ssloxford/dsns.git
cd dsns
pip3 install --editable .

Dependencies are listed in pyproject.toml, at the root of the repository. We recommend the use of a virtual environment to reduce the likelihood of dependency conflicts.

Usage

We recommend looking in the examples directory for usage examples, or at the documentation for further instruction.

Note

The examples in examples/paper require simulation logs that are not bundled with this repository due to their size, and are provided for reference only. The logs can be obtained by running examples/ccsds_reference.py and examples/custom_reference.py with the arguments shown at the bottom of the respective file, or by contacting the authors.

Contributing

We welcome any contributions to DSNS, including but not limited to improved documentation, refactoring, new features, examples, and reference scenarios. To make a contribution, please add an issue to the tracker or create a pull request, and we will aim to merge any changes shortly. Please note that any code changes must come with corresponding changes to the documentation.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.