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

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that UAVs equipped with Starlink terminals can provide reliable, high-throughput emergency internet connectivity in rural or disaster-affected areas, with minimal energy impact.

Contribution

It introduces a novel UAV-based system using commercial LEO satellite terminals for rapid emergency connectivity, validated through simulations and real-world experiments.

Findings

UAV with Starlink can deliver ~30 Mbps up to 200 meters

System maintains stable throughput with minimal UAV battery impact

Feasibility of deploying LEO terminals on UAVs for emergency use

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.