Observing the Skies - Ground-Based Cloud Detection for Evaluating the Impact of Clouds on LEO Communications

Weather conditions such as rain and clouds have been found to have a significant impact on the performance of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks. Since these systems use beam-forming for the ground-space communication, an accurate analysis of weather impact on the performance requires the availability of high-resolution weather data. In contrast to rain, measuring cloudiness at high resolutions is a challenging task. Typically, it is measured using GEO or LEO satellites that either have spatial resolutions in the magnitude of kilometers or temporal resolutions of multiple days. In this paper, we propose to detect clouds in images of the sky taken via cameras placed directly next to the LEO user terminal to observe relevant parts of the skies at high spatial and temporal resolutions. We build a prototype system based on a Raspberry Pi camera and evaluate the impact of clouds on Starlink performance in a six-month-long measurement study.