Technology, Process and Cost

Starlink Gen 2 Chipset

By Yole SystemPlus — May 2023

Technical and cost analysis of the Starlink Gen 2 Chipset

SPR23727

Key Features

Teardown of the system
Detailed optical and SEM images
Precise measurements
Materials analysis
Manufacturing process flow
Supply chain evaluation
Manufacturing cost analysis

What's new

This is the first time we have analyzed a Starlink system
Teardown of the Starlink Gen 2 Chipset (user terminal)
Detailed technical and cost analysis of selected devices
Analysis of the Starlink Gen 2 PCB and antenna elements

Satellites have become an integral part of modern life, with a wide range of applications in various fields. They are used for communication purposes such as telephone, television, internet, and radio broadcasts. Satellites are especially important in areas where phone lines are damaged, e.g., after a disaster, as they enable communication to continue to and from the affected regions. Concerning consumer mobile applications, in the year 2022 key players such as Huawei and Apple came up with innovations related to emergency satellite communication (ESC). These innovations allow customers (via their mobile phones) to contact emergency services via satellite. Access to these services reassures customer safety and can come in handy in situations when a customer is stranded in a dead zone. Satellites are also employed in navigation systems, weather forecasting, scientific research, and for defense and security purposes, among many other applications.

Traditionally, satellite internet services have often come from single geostationary satellites. These are characterized by their very high round-trip data time (high latency), making them unsuitable for supporting high data rate and low latency activities such as streaming, online gaming, and video calls.

Starlink, a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX, provides satellite internet access coverage to about 50 countries. Starlink began launching satellites in 2019, and as of February 2023 it has over 3,580 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), communicating with designated ground transceivers. Since Starlink satellites are found in a low orbit, they can support high data rate and low latency activities. To date, there exist two generations (gen 1 and gen 2) of the Starlink “dishy” transceivers. “Dishy” is short for “Dishy McFlatface” which is the nickname for the Starlink internet user terminal. However, some people tend to refer to the “rectangular dishy gen 2” as gen 3.

This report includes an investigation of the Starlink gen 2 system (user terminal). A step-by-step system teardown is performed, followed by a detailed study of selected major components in the system. Our analyses include die, EDX, processes, and cross-sections. Block diagrams of the system are also provided. Lastly, this report contains cost analyses of the identified main components in the Starlink gen 2 system.

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Starlink Gen 2 Chipset

Technical and cost analysis of the Starlink Gen 2 Chipset