A Vertical Look at UAV Connectivity in the Wild: Cellular vs. Starlink, 3D Characterization, and Performance Prediction

2026-05-26

AI Summary

This study addresses the lack of systematic empirical comparison between cellular and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks—such as Starlink—in three-dimensional airspace performance for low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating in野外 environments. The authors develop an open-source, synchronized measurement platform to collect and publicly release, for the first time, co-located and temporally aligned cellular and Starlink communication datasets at low altitudes. Employing a multi-layer measurement architecture, they comprehensively evaluate physical-layer signal characteristics, handover behaviors, and end-to-end performance. Their experiments reveal that altitude nonlinearly affects cellular signal strength and handover frequency: higher altitudes improve signal power by 15–20 dB but increase handovers by 3–4×, leading to significantly asymmetric round-trip times (RTTs). In contrast, Starlink achieves RTTs below 50 ms in 95% of scenarios and downlink throughput exceeding 25 Mbps, demonstrating markedly superior overall performance compared to cellular networks.

Abstract

In this paper, we present an open-source measurement platform designed to characterize the performance of commercial cellular (Verizon, a major US provider) and LEO satellite (Starlink) networks through real-world flight tests in rural environments. We implement a comprehensive multi-layer measurement approach spanning physical layer signal metrics, multi-cell network topology, and end-to-end (E2E) application performance. Through an extensive flight campaign with more than $10$ flight tests, $4.5$+ hours of flight time resulting in more than $18$K samples, we present the first detailed, open-source dataset analyzing dual cellular and Starlink performance for low-altitude UAV operations. Our cellular-Starlink comparative results, which are collected \emph{simultaneously at the same time and location}, demonstrate significant performance differences between the two technologies: the LEO satellite link achieves superior latency performance with $95\%$ of Round-Trip Time (RTT) measurements below $50$ ms compared to $80\%$ under $150$ ms for cellular, and exceptional downlink capacity with $95\%$ exceeding $25$ Mbps versus only $5$ Mbps for cellular. Our analysis on cellular network performance demonstrates that while higher altitudes (e.g., $330+$ m above the sea level) improve signal power by $15-20$ dB via line-of-sight (LOS) propagation, it causes a $3-4$ $\times$ increase in handover rates, which is due to excessive multi-cell visibility rather than signal degradation. Furthermore, we observe asymmetric impacts on the RTT performance due to handovers such that $53.5$\% of handovers improve RTT, but worst-case degradation ($275$ ms) is $2$ $\times$ larger than best-case improvement ($137$ ms).

Problem

• UAV connectivity
• cellular networks
• LEO satellite
• 3D characterization
• performance prediction

Innovation

• UAV connectivity
• LEO satellite
• cellular network
• handover analysis
• performance prediction