The 21st USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (USENIX NSDI) was held in Santa Clara, USA from April 16 to 18, 2024. The paper entitled “Democratizing Direct-to-Cell Low Earth Orbit Satellite Networks” from the Institute for Network Sciences and Cyberspace, Tsinghua University, has been awarded the USENIX NSDI Outstanding Paper this year. This paper’s first student author, first faculty author, and corresponding author are Lixin Liu, Yuanjie Li, and Hewu Li, respectively.

Direct-to-cell satellite networks, such as SpaceX Starlink, AST SpaceMobile, and Tiantong, are rapidly gaining momentum. However, the scarcity of spectrum and orbital resources, combined with the high operational and maintenance costs of satellite networks, poses significant challenges to the scalable and sustainable development of direct-to-cell satellite networks. Addressing these issues, the award-winning paper pioneers a multi-operator sharing paradigm and introduces MOSAIC—a self-serve, pay-as-you-go satellite network architecture. MOSAIC enables mobile network operators (MNOs) to dynamically lease third-party satellite network resources on demand. This flexible, economical, efficient, and secure approach empowers MNOs to expand their mobile services globally while reducing infrastructure investment burdens and promoting an open, multi-tenant integrated space-terrestrial network.

USENIX NSDI is well recognized as a premier international conference in the field of computer networking. It focuses on the design principles, implementation, and practical evaluation of networked and distributed systems. USENIX NSDI is classified as an A-class conference by the China Computer Federation (CCF).