Experimental Evaluation of a UAV-Mounted LEO Satellite Backhaul for Emergency Connectivity

2026-01-07

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This study addresses the critical need for rapid deployment and reliable connectivity in disaster scenarios where terrestrial communication infrastructure is compromised. The authors propose an airborne base station architecture leveraging a rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a commercial Starlink Mini terminal to provide Wi-Fi access in cellular-deprived areas via low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite backhaul. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work presents the first real-world flight validation of integrating off-the-shelf LEO satellite terminals with UAVs for emergency communications. System performance is evaluated through a combination of ns-3 simulations and field flight experiments, demonstrating stable uplink throughput of approximately 30 Mbps within a 200-meter coverage radius, with negligible impact on UAV battery life. The results confirm a favorable balance between network performance and energy efficiency under dynamic flight conditions, underscoring the practical viability of the proposed solution in emergency response scenarios.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Mobility, Driving & Flight
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

Reliable connectivity is critical for Public Protection and Disaster Relief operations, especially in rural or compromised environments where terrestrial infrastructure is unavailable. In such scenarios, NTNs, and specifically UAVs, are promising candidates to provide on-demand and rapid connectivity on the ground, serving as aerial base stations. In this paper, we implement a setup in which a rotary-wing UAV, equipped with a Starlink Mini terminal, provides Internet connectivity to an emergency ground user in the absence of cellular coverage via LEO satellites. The UAV functions as a Wi-Fi access point, while backhauling the ground traffic through the Starlink constellation. We evaluate the system via both network simulations in ns-3 and real-world flight experiments in a rural environment, in terms of throughput, latency, coverage, and energy consumption under static and dynamic flight conditions. Our results demonstrate that the system can maintain a stable uplink throughput of approximately 30 Mbps up to approximately 200 meters, and with minimal impact on the UAV battery lifetime. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of deploying commercial LEO satellite terminals on UAVs as a practical solution for emergency connectivity.

Problem

• emergency connectivity
• UAV
• LEO satellite
• disaster relief
• NTN

Innovation

• UAV-mounted LEO backhaul
• emergency connectivity
• Starlink Mini
• aerial base station
• NTN