esa · albertNos · Apr 30, 2022 · Dec 14, 2021 · Dec 14, 2021 · Dec 14, 2021
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
@@ -106,6 +106,31 @@ For this set the CMake variables:  `AUTOPAS_LOG_TUNINGDATA=ON` and `AUTOPAS_LOG_
 ## Processing TLE Input 
 Data on current satellites etc. is often found [online](https://www.space-track.org/) in the [TLE format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-line_element_set). We include a Jupyter notebook which can be used to process TLE data with pykep to create and analyze suitable datasets. Detailed instructions can be found in the notebook in `notebooks/Data Processing.ipynb`.
 
+## Generating and including Constellations
+Satellite constellations (e.g. Starlink, OneWeb) are usually described by a list of orbital shells.
+An orbital shell is described by a 4-tuple with information about `altitude`, `inclination`, `number of
+planes`, and `number of satellites` per plane. We provide a notebook
+[`notebooks/ConstellationGeneration/ConstellationGeneration.ipynb`](notebooks/ConstellationGeneration/ConstellationGeneration.ipynb) that can be used
+
+### How constellation satellites are inserted into the simulation
+
+The insertion of a constellation takes as long as specified by the `duration`
+parameter in the respective .yaml file. The time it takes to insert one shell of
+a constellation depends on the percentage of satellites the shell contributes to
+the constellation. Satellites of each orbital shell are inserted plane by plane
+and linearly over time.
+
+### Including the constellation data in simulation (`io` section):
+
+In the configuration file for the simulation, include the constellation(s) by
+defining the following fields:
+*  `constellationList`: Semicolon (`;`) separated list of constellation names. E.g. `Astra;Starlink;OneWeb`
+* `constellationFrequency`: Number of timesteps between constellation insertions.
+* `constellationCutoff`: Satellites are inserted with a delay, if there is an object within this range.
+* `altitudeSpread`: `[km]` Three times the standard deviation of the normal distribution describing
+  the imprecision of orbital insertion. ~99.74% of satellites deviate by less than this value from the
+  mean altitude.
+
 ## Output
 
 LADDS has multiple options for output that can be (de)activated mostly independent of each other via YAML. See [`cfg/default_cfg.yaml`](cfg/default_cfg.yaml) for relevant options.
@@ -139,5 +164,4 @@ Due to burn ups or breakups the number of particles in any iteration might diffe
 To keep file size reasonable compression is supported.
 
 ### CSV
-If HDF5 output is disabled entirely, collision data is written in a `.csv` file in ASCII layout.
-
+If HDF5 output is disabled entirely, collision data is written in a `.csv` file in ASCII layout.
diff --git a/cfg/default_cfg.yaml b/cfg/default_cfg.yaml
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@ sim:
     minutes: 0. # as floating points
     hours: 0.   # as floating points
     days: 0.    # as floating points
+  referenceTime: 2022-01-01 # calendar day associated with simulation start at iteration 0 (yyyy/mm/dd)
   maxAltitude: 10000 # Maximum satellite altitude above earth core. This number times two is the simulation box length. [km]
   minAltitude: 150 # Everything below this altitude above ground will be considered burning up [km]
   deltaT: 10.0 # [s]
@@ -43,7 +44,7 @@ io:
     writeFrequency: 1000 # Frequency of writing to the hdf5 file [iterations]
     compressionLevel: 4 # Valid Levels: 0 (no compression) - 9 (max compression)
 
-  #constellationList: AstraPhase2,100,7200 # ';'-seperated constellations consisting of path (to constellation directory), start time, duration
+  #constellationList: AstraPhase2 # ';'-separated constellations consisting of path (to constellation directory)
   constellationFrequency: 10 # Frequency of adding satellites to simulation [iterations]
   constellationCutoff: 0.1 # satellites of constellations are only inserted when there is no object within constellationCutoff range
   altitudeSpread: 1.0 # [km] normal distributed altitude deviations are usually smaller than this value (~99.74% chance)

diff --git a/data/.gitattributes b/data/.gitattributes
@@ -1,5 +1,4 @@
 initial_population.csv filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
 */pos_*.csv filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
 */v_*.csv filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
-*/shells_*.txt filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
-*/xparams_*.txt filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
+*/shells_*.yaml filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
diff --git a/data/Amazon/pos_Amazon.csv b/data/Amazon/pos_Amazon.csv
diff --git a/data/Amazon/shells_Amazon.txt b/data/Amazon/shells_Amazon.txt
diff --git a/data/Amazon/shells_Amazon.yaml b/data/Amazon/shells_Amazon.yaml
diff --git a/data/Amazon/v_Amazon.csv b/data/Amazon/v_Amazon.csv
diff --git a/data/Amazon/xparams_Amazon.txt b/data/Amazon/xparams_Amazon.txt
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase1/pos_AstraPhase1.csv b/data/AstraPhase1/pos_AstraPhase1.csv
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase1/shells_AstraPhase1.txt b/data/AstraPhase1/shells_AstraPhase1.txt
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase1/shells_AstraPhase1.yaml b/data/AstraPhase1/shells_AstraPhase1.yaml
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase1/v_AstraPhase1.csv b/data/AstraPhase1/v_AstraPhase1.csv
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase1/xparams_AstraPhase1.txt b/data/AstraPhase1/xparams_AstraPhase1.txt
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase2/pos_AstraPhase2.csv b/data/AstraPhase2/pos_AstraPhase2.csv
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase2/shells_AstraPhase2.txt b/data/AstraPhase2/shells_AstraPhase2.txt
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase2/shells_AstraPhase2.yaml b/data/AstraPhase2/shells_AstraPhase2.yaml
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase2/v_AstraPhase2.csv b/data/AstraPhase2/v_AstraPhase2.csv
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase2/xparams_AstraPhase2.txt b/data/AstraPhase2/xparams_AstraPhase2.txt
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase3/pos_AstraPhase3.csv b/data/AstraPhase3/pos_AstraPhase3.csv
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase3/shells_AstraPhase3.txt b/data/AstraPhase3/shells_AstraPhase3.txt
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase3/shells_AstraPhase3.yaml b/data/AstraPhase3/shells_AstraPhase3.yaml
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase3/v_AstraPhase3.csv b/data/AstraPhase3/v_AstraPhase3.csv
diff --git a/data/AstraPhase3/xparams_AstraPhase3.txt b/data/AstraPhase3/xparams_AstraPhase3.txt
diff --git a/data/GuoWang/pos_GuoWang.csv b/data/GuoWang/pos_GuoWang.csv
diff --git a/data/GuoWang/shells_GuoWang.txt b/data/GuoWang/shells_GuoWang.txt
diff --git a/data/GuoWang/shells_GuoWang.yaml b/data/GuoWang/shells_GuoWang.yaml
diff --git a/data/GuoWang/v_GuoWang.csv b/data/GuoWang/v_GuoWang.csv
diff --git a/data/GuoWang/xparams_GuoWang.txt b/data/GuoWang/xparams_GuoWang.txt
diff --git a/data/OneWebPhase1/pos_OneWebPhase1.csv b/data/OneWebPhase1/pos_OneWebPhase1.csv
diff --git a/data/OneWebPhase1/shells_OneWebPhase1.txt b/data/OneWebPhase1/shells_OneWebPhase1.txt
diff --git a/data/OneWebPhase1/shells_OneWebPhase1.yaml b/data/OneWebPhase1/shells_OneWebPhase1.yaml
diff --git a/data/OneWebPhase1/v_OneWebPhase1.csv b/data/OneWebPhase1/v_OneWebPhase1.csv
diff --git a/data/OneWebPhase1/xparams_OneWebPhase1.txt b/data/OneWebPhase1/xparams_OneWebPhase1.txt
diff --git a/data/OneWebPhase2/pos_OneWebPhase2.csv b/data/OneWebPhase2/pos_OneWebPhase2.csv
diff --git a/data/OneWebPhase2/shells_OneWebPhase2.txt b/data/OneWebPhase2/shells_OneWebPhase2.txt
diff --git a/data/OneWebPhase2/shells_OneWebPhase2.yaml b/data/OneWebPhase2/shells_OneWebPhase2.yaml
diff --git a/data/OneWebPhase2/v_OneWebPhase2.csv b/data/OneWebPhase2/v_OneWebPhase2.csv
diff --git a/data/OneWebPhase2/xparams_OneWebPhase2.txt b/data/OneWebPhase2/xparams_OneWebPhase2.txt
diff --git a/data/StarlinkGen1/pos_StarlinkGen1.csv b/data/StarlinkGen1/pos_StarlinkGen1.csv
diff --git a/data/StarlinkGen1/shells_StarlinkGen1.txt b/data/StarlinkGen1/shells_StarlinkGen1.txt
diff --git a/data/StarlinkGen1/shells_StarlinkGen1.yaml b/data/StarlinkGen1/shells_StarlinkGen1.yaml
diff --git a/data/StarlinkGen1/v_StarlinkGen1.csv b/data/StarlinkGen1/v_StarlinkGen1.csv
diff --git a/data/StarlinkGen1/xparams_StarlinkGen1.txt b/data/StarlinkGen1/xparams_StarlinkGen1.txt
diff --git a/data/StarlinkGen2/pos_StarlinkGen2.csv b/data/StarlinkGen2/pos_StarlinkGen2.csv
diff --git a/data/StarlinkGen2/shells_StarlinkGen2.txt b/data/StarlinkGen2/shells_StarlinkGen2.txt
diff --git a/data/StarlinkGen2/v_StarlinkGen2.csv b/data/StarlinkGen2/v_StarlinkGen2.csv
diff --git a/data/StarlinkGen2/xparams_StarlinkGen2.txt b/data/StarlinkGen2/xparams_StarlinkGen2.txt
diff --git a/data/Telesat/pos_Telesat.csv b/data/Telesat/pos_Telesat.csv
diff --git a/data/Telesat/shells_Telesat.txt b/data/Telesat/shells_Telesat.txt
diff --git a/data/Telesat/shells_Telesat.yaml b/data/Telesat/shells_Telesat.yaml
diff --git a/data/Telesat/v_Telesat.csv b/data/Telesat/v_Telesat.csv
diff --git a/data/Telesat/xparams_Telesat.txt b/data/Telesat/xparams_Telesat.txt