Demystifying Starlink Network Performance under Vehicular Mobility with Dynamic Beam Switching

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Starlink network performance is affected by vehicular mobility, focusing on dynamic beam switching events, and proposes a new method to identify satellites during such events to improve understanding and performance.

Contribution

It introduces a mobility-aware satellite identification method that detects dynamic beam switching, addressing limitations of existing methods in mobile and obstructed scenarios.

Findings

UT performs multiple dynamic beam switching attempts during link degradation.

Performance degradation can extend beyond regular 15-second handovers.

The proposed method effectively detects beam switching events in mobility scenarios.

Abstract

In the last few years, considerable research efforts have focused on measuring and improving Starlink network performance, especially for user terminals (UTs) in stationary scenarios. However, the performance of Starlink networks in mobility settings, particularly with frequent changes in the UT's orientation, and the impact of environmental factors, such as transient obstructions, has not been thoroughly studied, leaving gaps in understanding the causes of performance degradation. Recently, researchers have started identifying the communicating satellites to evaluate satellite selection strategies and the impact on network performance. However, existing Starlink satellite identification methods only work in stationary, obstruction-free scenarios, as they do not account for UT mobility, obstructions or detect dynamic beam switching events. In this paper, we reveal that the UT can perform multiple dynamic beam switching attempts to connect to different satellites when the UT-satellite link is degraded. This degradation can occur either due to the loss of line-of-sight (LoS) from changes in the FOV or obstructions, or due to poor signal quality, extending UT-satellite handovers beyond the well-known 15-second regular handover interval. We propose a mobility-aware Starlink satellite identification method that detects dynamic beam switching events, and plausibly explain network performance using UT's diagnostic data and connected satellite information. Our findings demystifies the mobile Starlink network performance degradations, which is crucial to enhance the end-to-end performance of transport layer protocols and in diverse application scenarios.