SatPlan 360°: Service-Driven Satellite Planning for Deployable NTN Architectures

Satellite networks only become meaningful when real services depend on them. Those services are delivered on the ground, to users and assets that move, change context, and operate under real-world constraints. 

SatPlan 360° approaches NTN planning from the perspective of service delivery, connecting ground-level requirements with satellite constellation design to support deployable, resilient, and operational architectures. 

Introduced as a new addition to the Lasting Software portfolio, SatPlan 360° represents a natural extension of the company’s work across NTN planning, emulation, and validation. It addresses an increasingly common need: understanding service feasibility, robustness, and risk early, before architectural assumptions are carried into integration and deployment phases. 

Planning beyond coverage maps 

Traditional satellite planning tools focus primarily on coverage and visibility - where satellites can be seen from the ground. While necessary, this perspective is no longer sufficient when services must operate continuously, reliably, and at scale. 

In practice, what matters is not only whether a satellite is visible, but whether a service can be sustained over time, along real routes, and under changing operational and environmental conditions. This is often where early design optimism meets operational reality. 

SatPlan 360° shifts planning from static coverage estimation to service-oriented evaluation, enabling planners to assess how availability, continuity, latency, and degradation risks evolve in real scenarios, before deployment decisions are made. 

From visibility to service reality 

For mobile, safety-critical, and mission-oriented applications, short service interruptions, unstable handovers, interference effects, or localized coverage gaps are not edge cases-they are operational risks. 

SatPlan 360° evaluates service performance along actual paths of use, such as roads, railways, maritime routes, and operational corridors. Satellite motion and user mobility are considered jointly, while terrain, elevation, environmental constraints, and interference conditions are explicitly taken into account. 

This route-based, time-aware approach enables the generation of service-level and resilience heatmaps, allowing early identification of: 

• coverage gaps 

• service discontinuities and degradation zones 

• handover instability and continuity risks 

• interference-prone regions 

long before systems are integrated or validated. 

Service-driven constellation planning 

A defining capability of SatPlan 360° is its service-driven approach to constellation planning. 

Rather than evaluating architectures solely through orbital geometry, the platform assesses how well different designs meet concrete service-level objectives- where services are required, for how long, and under which operational conditions. 

SatPlan 360° supports the evaluation and comparison of LEO, MEO, GEO, hybrid, and fully custom constellations, enabling informed trade-offs between performance, resilience, complexity, and cost. This allows architectural decisions to be discussed using evidence rather than assumptions, at a stage where flexibility is highest and changes are least costly. 

Built on realistic system models 

SatPlan 360° combines multiple modelling layers to reflect real-world NTN behavior, including: 

• orbital and constellation modelling 

• ground-aware propagation and visibility analysis 

• route-based mobility modelling 

• time-aware access, continuity, and service availability evaluation 

Together, these elements provide a realistic foundation for understanding how services behave across space, ground, mobility, and time - not as static snapshots, but as evolving operational scenarios. 

Position in the NTN ecosystem 

SatPlan 360° is designed as the planning and analysis layer of the NTN workflow. 

It is architected to interface with emulation, testbed, and system-level validation platforms across the NTN ecosystem. It already integrates naturally with: 

• CELEOS, for high-fidelity satellite channel emulation 

• FLEX-SPACE 5G NTN, for full end-to-end system validation 

while remaining open and extensible to third-party tools and external platforms. 

This enables a continuous workflow from service-driven planning → emulation → end-to-end validation, ensuring that early assumptions remain consistent as projects move closer to deployment. 

Who SatPlan 360° is for 

SatPlan 360° is intended for organizations involved in the design, evaluation, and deployment of NTN-enabled services, including: 

• defense and military organizations, where service availability, continuity, and resilience under constrained and contested conditions are mission-critical 

• terrestrial network operators and mobile network operators (MNOs) exploring the integration of NTN capabilities into existing infrastructures 

• satellite operators and system integrators designing and evolving multi-orbit and hybrid architectures 

• automotive, mobility, and transportation stakeholders relying on continuous connectivity along defined routes 

• research institutions, universities, and innovation hubs supporting architectural studies and early-stage validation 

• public authorities and critical infrastructure stakeholders responsible for connectivity planning and emergency services 

SatPlan 360° is particularly valuable in early project and pre-deployment phases, where architectural flexibility is highest and service-level risks can be identified and mitigated most effectively. 

Planning NTN with confidence 

By grounding constellation design in real service requirements and resilience analysis, SatPlan 360° enables organizations to move beyond coverage estimation toward service confidence. 

It supports informed decisions, realistic expectations, and smoother transitions from planning to emulation and validation- reducing surprises and rework as systems approach deployment. 

SatPlan 360° - where service realities drive constellation design.