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CrowdLink: Unlocking Idle LEO Network Capacity with User Terminals

Authors Lixin Liu , Jinyao Zhang , Bijia You , Yimei Chen , Jiabo Yang , Yuanjie Li , Hewu Li , Qian Wu , Zeqi Lai , Jun Liu

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OASIcs.NINeS.2026.28.pdf
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Document Identifiers

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Networks → Network architectures
  • Networks → Network design principles
  • Networks → Network protocol design
Keywords
  • LEO Satellite Networks
  • User Terminal Relaying
  • Capacity Utilization

Metrics

Abstract

The Low Earth Orbit (LEO) network is booming worldwide thanks to its unprecedented number of satellites. However, most of these satellites remain underutilized to connect more users or boost performance, posing tensions for their return on investment. A critical cause is that their gateways to the Internet (ground stations) are geographically skewed or even centralized, forming last-mile bottlenecks. We examine the potential of eliminating these bottlenecks with ubiquitous user terminals (UTs). Our solution, CrowdLink, reuses UTs as local access points to decentralize satellites' gateways to the Internet, and as relays to convert idle satellite radio links into additional paths for more network capacity. This user-centric paradigm is self-scaling to more UTs and satellites (akin to P2P networks), resilient to rapid satellite mobility, mutually beneficial for users and operators, and readily deployable in operational LEO networks. Our real tests with Starlink UTs across three countries and large-scale simulations show that CrowdLink can increase each UT’s throughput by 3.09× on average (up to 65.27×), double the LEO network capacity utilization, and unlock 2.05-7.99 million more users for Starlink without adding satellites/ground stations.

Cite As Get BibTex

Lixin Liu, Jinyao Zhang, Bijia You, Yimei Chen, Jiabo Yang, Yuanjie Li, Hewu Li, Qian Wu, Zeqi Lai, and Jun Liu. CrowdLink: Unlocking Idle LEO Network Capacity with User Terminals. In 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 139, pp. 28:1-28:26, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.28

Author Details

Lixin Liu
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Jinyao Zhang
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Bijia You
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Yimei Chen
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Jiabo Yang
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Yuanjie Li
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Hewu Li
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Qian Wu
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Zeqi Lai
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Jun Liu
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Funding

This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan of China (2022YFB3105201) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62572264).

Acknowledgements

We thank our shepherd, Dr. Rachee Singh, and all reviewers for their valuable feedback.

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