How does Starlink Satellite Internet Work?📡☄🖥

With Starlink internet, data is continuously being sent between a ground dish and a Starlink satellite orbiting 550km above. Furthermore, the Starlink satellite zooms across the sky at 27,000km/hr! How can the dish and satellite maintain a continuous connection? And then how is data sent back and forth? Well, in this video we're going to dive into the inner workings for the ground dish and Starlink satellites, and see how a beam of data is formed, how this beam is swept across the sky, and then finally what exactly is in that beam that allows for incredibly fast internet! This is an incredible feat of technology and engineering, so stick around!

Table of Contents:
00:00 - Intro to Starlink
01:00 - Overview of Exploring Starlink
01:46 - Difference between Starlink and Broadcast Satellites
03:28 - Parts Inside a Dishy McFlatface
05:06 - How does an Aperture Couple Patch Antenna Work?
09:13 - Electromagnetic Wave Emission
12:45 - Forming a Beam that Reaches Space: Beamforming
15:22 - Brilliant
16:52 - Steering a Beam to Sweep Across the Sky
18:54 - Starlink: Phase Array Beam Steering
21:11 - Notes on Phased Array Beam Steering
22:24 - Sending Data in a Beam to the Starlink Satellite
23:27 - Innerworkings of 64QAM
26:02 - Actual Size of Starlink Dishy & EM Waves
26:55 - Images from the Starlink Patent
27:49 - Outro

Key Branches from this video are: How does Bluetooth Work?

Erratum:
At 2m50s, the orbits are inaccurate. The TV satellite should be in geostationary orbit moving in the same direction as the Earth. Furthermore, all the Starlink satellites should be orbiting West to East. Credit to Paul S.

Script, Modeling, Animation: Teddy Tablante
Twitter: @teddytablante
Modeling: Prakash Kakadiya
Animation: Mike Radjabov
Voice Over: Phil Lee
Sound Effects: Luis Zuleta
Sound Effects and Music Editor: David Pinete
Sound Effects: Raúl Núñez
Supervising Sound Editor and Mixer: Luis Huesca

Post with Adobe Premiere Pro

References:

Distributed Phase Shifter Array System and Method [Starlink Patent]

Wikipedia contributors. "Antenna Types","Aperture(Antenna)" ,"Low Earth Orbit", "Patch Antenna", "Phased Array", "Starlink" Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Visited August 2022

#Starlink #Satellite #Internet

[BranchEducation]

How many shooting stars did you see throughout the video? Post what you counted and we'll pick a random correct comment to receive a prize. Also, check out the Creator's Comments found in the English (Canada) subtitles for many additional details. Note: you can access them via the options button -> transcript -> English(Canada). FAQ: Q1) Do the two phase shifts from beam steering and 64QAM mess each other up? A: No. For transmission, the data is encoded into the 64QAM signal and sent to all the beamformers where then the beam steering phase shift is added. Then the signal is sent to the front-end modules which increases the power for the patch antennas.

[JerryRigEverything]

Way cool. Very interesting process. I'm glad there are smart people in the world who understand all this stuff.

[loukmor]

The fact that a YouTube channel produces greater content than a big science tv channel while in the same time making it easy to understand blows me always.
Your videos are so good (and infrequent (in a good way (for quality))) always leave me wondering how do you people make do.
Anyway, keep up the amazing work.

[AlgernonNormanOwen]

With my degree in physics, all the concepts are pretty natural and intuitive for me, but my mind is still blown to realize that some engineers and technicians actually made it real, and error proof, and commercialized it! And as a teacher, I can still say that you did an amazing job explaining how these things work. Great job, and thank you!

[pwrveif]

I am a radio engineer. I just want to say....Waw, explaining beam forming using massive antenna array ! That is very hard thing to do but you had the simplest and clearest explanation that I have ever seen!

[imthetruegotmilk]

I am absolutely ASTONISHED by the technology behind Starlink, and equally STUNNED by the effort Branch Education put to make it so accessible... This is very high quality content !

[airmailman]

My background is in electronic engineering. I've watched thousands of YouTube videos and I've never seen a more professionally made and complete video as this one. Just enough detail to not be overwhelming but complete enough to get the thought across. Excellent.

[realgumballpro]

After watching this video, I realize I am dumb.

[matthewgragg]

This is the epitome of YouTube. The fact that such high quality educational content is free is one of the few things that give me hope that technology and understating is the true epitome of research of advancement in society.

[PemboCycling]

Network engineer here, with a physics background.

Refreshing to see an accurate, techy video that breaks down so much of the system.

It's a rabbit hole of information but you managed to cover everything in enough detail to introduce it, while allowing the audience to choose whether they want to go further into the rabbit hole.

Many of the techniques used by starlink are used in your home WiFi, or other systems you're familiar with. Starlink brings a lot of things together (including Elons infinite wallet) in a way that hasn't been done before.

[Woogachaka]

I'm a phd student working on these kinds of projects, and I want to applaud you. This is the cleanest and clearest explanation of phased array antennas I've seen and will be super helpful in helping me explain what I do to others

[TINTUHD]

I believe this might be the best video I have ever seen on YouTube in my life.


No exaggeration.

The technology of starlink.
The script of this video.
The animations.


I’m in awe

[jrphillip]

This channel has to be one of the greatest channels on YouTube. Actually, the best educational content ever created in media.

You don't ever get this level of detail and explanation on a multimillion dollar production on TV.

[domenicocamacho]

I'm an engineer, and thus I was amazed by the level of detail provided here, it is very educational and in my perspective one of the most valuable videos over the internet for the content, simplicity to explain, and understanding level of the subject explained. Please continue to do more videos like it, I'm for sure watching this video a couple of times more to pay attention to details that I missed on the first watch. Kudos to the people that created it!!

[RideGasGas]

As a satcom engineer with over 40 years of experience in the field, I can say that you did a really good job of distilling this information down to something a layperson can grasp. Well done.

I would point out that in addition to receive only satellite TV antennas that communicate with geostationary satellites, there are also two way antennas that communicate to GSO satellites as well, along with other variants which provided two way communications with other non-geostationary satellite networks in different orbits.

[donschneider]

I have been in the RF, Radar, and Comms industry since 1972. I have to say this is the best explanation of RF and the Antenna theory explanation I've seen.
Thank you.

[totoksaikam]

I worked as a radio and antenna engineer for over 30 years. This video really provides an extraordinary explanation. Thank you so much for giving us videos like this. We are waiting for other great videos

[muttarameshchandraprem]

Studying this in a course is one thing and seeing it with such a good animation of a real usecase is completely different thing. Thanks for making such videos, I am sure lot of effort goes into this.

[tejaskalburgi]

Having completed my bachelor's in electronics and communication engineering and master's in electrical engineering I was able to follow the entire video pretty comfortably and everytime I see these seemingly unrelated concepts all coming together and get things done my mind is completely blown! Electrical engineering is beautiful. Thanks for such an amazing video and explanation.

[douglassimpson]

This is the best explanation of phased array antennas that I have ever seen, especially from a layman's point of view. Great job!