Mission-Critical Connectivity Over LEO Satellites: Performance Measurements Using OneWeb System

Public safety organizations and first responders need extremely reliable connections with high security and availability. The operations are sometimes conducted in locations and conditions where terrestrial networks are not available. Current and coming low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite systems can support mission-critical services in those situations and help saving lives. However, it is not enough to analyze the performance of LEO systems theoretically. It is essential to test and measure services in locations of interest. In this article, we focus on studying the OneWeb system and how it can support mission-critical applications. We analyze the requirements of various applications and describe the field trial setup used to characterize the performance of the service in Finland. Two trials were conducted during fall 2022 and winter 2023 close to the border of the coverage area. The results show that the OneWeb system can support close to real-time applications due to relatively low latency and jitter values as well as broadband connections with the availability around 98% over all test cases. The tests also showed that the OneWeb service is continuously developing and the service level improved between trials conducted. A number of potential future measurement scenarios were identified during the trials.