Project Loon
Project Loon is a research and development project being developed by Google with the mission of providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. The project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 20 km (12 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 3G-like speeds.Because of the project's seemingly outlandish mission goals, Google dubbed it "Project Loon".
Project Loon is a research and development project being developed by Google with the mission of providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. The project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 20 km (12 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 3G-like speeds.Because of the project's seemingly outlandish mission goals, Google dubbed it "Project Loon".
The balloons are maneuvered by adjusting their altitude to
float to a wind layer after identifying the wind layer with the desired speed
and direction using wind data from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Users of the service connect
to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their
building. The signal travels through the balloon network from balloon to
balloon, then to a ground-based station connected to an Internet service provider (ISP), then
onto the global Internet. The system aims to bring Internet access to remote
and rural areas poorly served by existing provisions, and to improve
communication during natural
disasters to affected regions. Key people involved in the
project include Rich DeVaul, chief technical architect, who is also an expert
on wearable technology; Mike Cassidy, a project leader; and Cyrus
Behroozi, a networking and telecommunication lead.
Technology
The technology designed
in the project could allow countries to avoid using expensive fiber cable that
would have to be installed underground to allow users to connect to the
Internet. Google feels this will greatly increase Internet usage in developing
countries in regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia that can't afford to lay
underground fiber cable.
The high-altitude polyethylene balloons
fly around the world on the prevailing winds (mostly in a direction parallel with
lines of latitude, i.e. east or west). Solar panels about the size of a card
table that are just below the free-flying balloons generate enough electricity
in four hours to power the transmitter for a day and beam down the Internet
signal to ground stations. These ground stations are spaced about 100 km
(62 mi) apart, or two balloon hops, and bounce the signal to other relay
balloons that send the signal back down. This makes Internet access available
to anyone in the world who has a receiver and is within range of a
balloon.Currently, the balloons communicate using unlicensed 2.4 and 5.8
GHz ISM bands, and
Google claims that the setup allows it to deliver "speeds comparable
to 3G"
to users. It is unclear how technologies that rely on short communications
times (low latency pings), such as VoIP,
might need to be modified to work in an environment similar to mobile phones
where the signal may have to relay through multiple balloons before reaching
the wider Internet.
The first person to connect to the "Google Balloon
Internet" after the initial test balloons were launched into the
stratosphere was a farmer in the town of Leeston,
New Zealand, who was one of 50 people in the area around Christchurch who
agreed to be a pilot tester for Project Loon. The New Zealand farmer lived in a
rural location that couldn't get broadband access to the Internet, and had used
a satellite Internet service in 2009, but found that he sometimes had to pay
over $1000 per month for the service. The locals knew nothing about the secret
project other than its ability to deliver Internet connectivity; but allowed
project workers to attach a basketball-sized receiver resembling a giant
bright-red party balloon to an outside wall of their property in order to connect
to the network.
The high-altitude balloons fly twice as high as airplanes, but
below the range of satellites. Each balloon provides Internet service in a
20 km (12 mi) radius covering an area of about 1,256 km2(485 sq mi).
For More info : http://www.google.com/loon/
