Satellite Internet Latency & Link Budget

Orbital Altitude

Altitude 550 km

Elevation mask (min. usable angle) 10°

Time acceleration 300×

Link Status

ACQUIRING…

Slant range

– km

Elevation angle

–°

Round-trip (ping)

– ms

Path loss (12 GHz)

– dB

Orbital period

–

How it works

A ground station (G) and satellite (S) form a triangle with Earth's centre (C). With Earth radius R⊕ = 6,371 km, orbital radius r = R⊕ + h, and central angle γ between the sub-satellite point and the ground station:

slant range   d = √(R⊕² + r² − 2·R⊕·r·cos γ)
elevation     ε = acos[(R⊕² + d² − r²) / (2·R⊕·d)] − 90°

The satellite only carries traffic while ε is above the elevation mask — the minimum look-angle before buildings, trees or the horizon itself block the antenna. That is why low satellites sweep through usable passes lasting minutes, while a geostationary satellite (h = 35,786 km, orbital period 23h56m — matched to Earth's rotation) sits at a fixed elevation forever.

round-trip time   RTT = 4d / c        (up + down, then back)
free-space loss   FSPL(dB) = 20·log₁₀(d_km) + 20·log₁₀(f_MHz) + 32.44
orbital period    T = 2π·√(r³ / μ),   μ = 398,600 km³/s²

Low orbits (Starlink-class, ~550 km) give one-hop latency near 4–8 ms one-way, but any one satellite is only overhead for a few minutes — real constellations hand the link to the next satellite as this one sets.
Geostationary orbits (traditional satellite internet) never need a handoff, but the extra distance sets a hard latency floor around 480 ms round-trip — pure speed-of-light delay, not congestion.
Path loss (FSPL) grows with distance too, at a fixed 12 GHz Ku-band frequency — this is why GEO terminals need much larger dishes and higher transmit power than a small LEO user terminal for the same data rate.

Satellite Ground station Active link

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