Link-to-System Mapping for 5G NR Sidelink System Simulations

Published

March 4, 2026

Author(s)

Thomas Henderson, Peng Liu, Chunmei Liu, Fernando Cintron

Abstract

We describe extensions to the Network Simulator version 3 (ns-3) New Radio (NR) sidelink simulator for higher-fidelity packet error models based on an extensive simulation campaign using the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Fifth Generation (5G) NR Link-Level Simulator (LLS). These error models support the system-level simulation of future 5G Sidelink public safety scenarios. We first describe the scope, methodology, and output of the link level campaign and its validation. We next describe the options available to map this data into new error models within the ns-3 simulator, and discuss how we handled various integration issues including interpolation, extrapolation, the need for per-retransmission error tables in ns-3, and how to handle retransmissions with varying signal to noise ratio. We showed that the aggregate output of ns-3 simulations using the new error model matches well with the LLS simulation data. Finally, we illustrate several other sensitivities to parameter selection and describe our future plans for extending the error models.

Proceedings Title

2025 IEEE World Forum on Public Safety Technology (WF-PST)

Conference Dates

September 23-25, 2025

Conference Location

Orlando, FL, US

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/WF-PST65083.2025.00023

Local Download

Keywords

NR, Sidelink, Public Safety

Citation

Henderson, T. , Liu, P. , Liu, C. and Cintron, F. (2026), Link-to-System Mapping for 5G NR Sidelink System Simulations, 2025 IEEE World Forum on Public Safety Technology (WF-PST), Orlando, FL, US, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/WF-PST65083.2025.00023, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=959926 (Accessed May 28, 2026)

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