Google tests solar-powered drones to deliver 5G Internet

    Welcome to our readers on the iCover Blog Pages ! According to the British agency The Guardian, as part of the new Project SkyBender project, the American IT giant has begun testing solar-powered drones, the purpose of which is to provide users with access to the next generation of 5G wireless high-speed Internet where they need it. The new Google project, like the Google Loon project, is part of the company's global program to create ways and conditions for wireless Internet access in hard-to-reach places. For testing prototypes, the private spaceport Spaceport America in New Mexico was chosen - the property of billionaire Richard Branson.

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    The goal of the Google project, codenamed Project SkyBender, is to test the prototype of a transceiver and an unmanned aerial vehicle using the millimeter-wave communication channel and to obtain a stable high-speed Internet connection with them.

    According to theoretical calculations, Guardian notes that the technology of organizing a wireless communication channel using millimeter waves has a speed potential of 40 times higher than that in 4G (LTE) networks. According to Jacques Radell, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington from Seattle, who specializes in this area: “The huge advantage of millimeter waves is their access to a new frequency range, because the spectrum used in telephony today is full.” But at the same time, one of the key technological problems is the limited range of propagation of millimeter-wave waves and their dependence on weather conditions. The 28GHz signal used by Google’s experts during the test attenuates at a distance of about a tenth of that which under similar conditions can provide a 4G channel. To overcome these limitations and successfully transmit a stable signal with the required characteristics from the drone, Google is experimenting with the possibilities of using phased array technology. “This is extremely difficult and eats up a lot of energy,” the professor commented briefly but succinctly, without talking about the results achieved.

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    To rent drones and support aircraft, Google leases a hangar of about 14,000 square meters. m in the territory of the private spaceport Spaceport America, located in the state of New Mexico. The Spaceport America terminal itself was designed by Richard Foster to serve the needs of the ambitious but currently frozen Virgin Galactic program.

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    According to Guardian, last summer the company installed two sets of transceivers and its own set of flight control equipment in the Operations Center, located separately from the terminal, and began testing them. At the same time, a repeater tower and other equipment were installed in the immediate vicinity of the spaceport, apparently in order to check the reception quality of millimeter waves, the newspaper notes.

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    As part of ongoing experiments, Google experts are testing the Avrora Centavr OPA (optionally manned aircraft) and the solar powered drones developed by the Google Titan team. The latter was created in 2014 after the absorption of Titan Aerospace, a well-known manufacturer of solar-powered drones with a wingspan of up to 50m.

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    According to information provided by the Guardian, Google has extended the permission of the U.S. Federal Service for Radio Frequencies, allowing experimental work in the millimeter wave range until July 2016. Hiring a hangar from Virgin Galactic costs about $ 1,000 per day; the company paid $ 300,000 to Spaceport America for helping to install servers, millimeter-wave transceivers and other technical assistance.

    The project is being implemented in an environment of increased secrecy, which is the reason for the absence of any clarifying technical information. Representatives of Google themselves - admits the Guardian, they do not comment on the situation. Given the obvious and non-obvious technical problems, even the immediate prospects for the development of the project are difficult to predict, but the final goal set by Google looks very impressive, and this is, at least, the ability to deliver high-quality high-speed Internet in emergency situations when drones can be the only way communications.

    It should be said that the stakes in the struggle for the right of the first night in spreading a new communication standard are quite high and Google is not the first company working on the creation of flying vehicles using millimeter-wave waves to organize a communication channel. A little earlier, in 2014, a similar task in the Mobile Hotspots project was set by the Dapra agency. The goal of the project, which has successfully passed the stage of field trials to establish a stable communication channel, is to create a UAV fleet that provides Internet delivery at a speed of 1 Gb / s to military personnel located in remote inaccessible regions. Another key competitor of Google in the “development” of a new generation of wireless global Internet space is Mark Zuckerberg.

    Theguardian



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