2026-07-28T23:59:06Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:25613 2026-06-23T12:10:23Z ddc:004 open_access

CrowdLink: Unlocking Idle LEO Network Capacity with User Terminals Liu, Lixin Zhang, Jinyao You, Bijia Chen, Yimei Yang, Jiabo Li, Yuanjie Li, Hewu Wu, Qian Lai, Zeqi Liu, Jun LEO Satellite Networks User Terminal Relaying Capacity Utilization 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. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Lixin Liu and Jinyao Zhang and Bijia You and Yimei Chen and Jiabo Yang and Yuanjie Li and Hewu Li and Qian Wu and Zeqi Lai and Jun Liu 2026 Is Part Of OASIcs, Volume 139, 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.28 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-256130 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.28 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode