Measuring the Potential for Bundled Starlink Performance within a Single Service Cell

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks such as Starlink allow global and affordable internet access. This not only connects remote residents, but also enables new potentials such as connecting non-stationary agricultural systems in rural areas for high-precision spot farming. One challenge is that tractors and farming robots need to transmit large amounts of data from cameras and laser scanners in real-time, which easily overwhelms the uplink capabilities of a single LEO connection. In this paper, we examine the Starlink performance of multiple terminals within a single service cell to lay ground for multipath link bundling as a possible approach to increase link capabilities. For this purpose, we present two measurement setups consisting of four and seven Starlink dishes placed in one service cell. We conduct multiple measurements and evaluate UDP and TCP throughput, latency, and packet loss. We find that UDP throughput scales almost linearly with the number of dishes, indicating significant bundling potential up to an expected limit. In contrast, TCP BBRv1’s bundling potential is limited, due to inefficiencies in utilizing the links. Moreover, we find that some packet loss events are synchronized within a service cell. For future and independent research, we make our dataset publicly available.