Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • apa.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Inferring Starlink Physical Layer Transmission Rates Through Receiver Packet Timestamps
Karlstad University, Faculty of Health, Science and Technology (starting 2013), Department of Mathematics and Computer Science (from 2013).ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3461-7079
Karlstad University, Faculty of Health, Science and Technology (starting 2013), Department of Mathematics and Computer Science (from 2013).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3570-9525
Karlstad University, Faculty of Health, Science and Technology (starting 2013), Department of Mathematics and Computer Science (from 2013).ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7311-9334
2024 (English)In: 2024 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), IEEE, 2024Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Although Starlink has been deployed for several years, a detailed understanding of system internals is still lacking. In this work we employ precise per-packet timestamps obtained from a hardware-timestamp capable NIC connected to a Starlink terminal.We find that Starlink frame timing details are readily observable at the network layer by analyzing the packet timing patterns.Based on a one-week measurement campaign we collect around half a billion of packet size and timing observations. Processing these observations yields 2.3 million transmission bursts. To learn details on the radio resource management we develop a methodology to infer the effective physical layer sending rate. Our findings show that although Starlink throughput can vary widely over multiple time-scales, there are a small number of fundamental physical layer transmission rates. We employ Gaussian Mixture Modeling to determine 14 such fundamental transmission rates, and relate the obtained rates to previous knowledge of the Starlink OFDMA frame structure. Our empirical observations provide an excellent match for a radio resource configuration where a Starlink frame employs 1000 subcarriers and 287 symbols per frame for user traffic transmission, which for uniform 4-QAM modulation yields a base rate of 430.5 Mbps. This physical layer base rate appears to mostly be varied by multiples of 27 Mbps, in several instances likely by modifying the modulation of a subset of the symbols in multiples of 18 symbols. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
IEEE, 2024.
Keywords [en]
Symbols, Modulation, Receivers, Ethernet, Physical layer, Throughput, Size measurement
National Category
Telecommunications
Research subject
Computer Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-98080DOI: 10.1109/WCNC57260.2024.10570978ISI: 001268569302139Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85187555218ISBN: 979-8-3503-0359-9 (print)ISBN: 979-8-3503-0358-2 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-98080DiVA, id: diva2:1829570
Conference
IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, April 21-24, 2024.
Projects
DRIVE
Funder
Knowledge FoundationAvailable from: 2024-01-19 Created: 2024-01-19 Last updated: 2025-10-16Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(3357 kB)2705 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT02.pdfFile size 3357 kBChecksum SHA-512
6f917d771e316e39065410effb4170b171fce43db1cd88ca63cc8805edc5cb1f994e5d4a77c8be63b18ca69c156a5eeaea423010e2a798d7b08541a641e6a997
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Garcia, JohanSundberg, SimonBrunstrom, Anna

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Garcia, JohanSundberg, SimonBrunstrom, Anna
By organisation
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science (from 2013)
Telecommunications

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 2793 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
isbn
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
isbn
urn-nbn
Total: 1996 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • apa.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf