Saturday, May 3, 2014

Balloons that spread internet

Balloons that spread internet hmmm the topic sounds interesting ryt?? Yah its true in near future balloons will be used to broadcast the spectrum for internet. This is an initiative by Google carried under project named 'project loon'. The concept of this project is, helium balloons will be launched to high altitude and from there they will broadcast the internet. So the altitude is about 10km above the earth, the atmospheric level is called stratosphere the layer where aeroplanes fly. There will be several balloons and they will be communicating with each other. The balloons will be controlled by a base station and the signal will be received by antennas in homes like a WiFi actually its a WiFi. The aim of this project is to provide internet to those regions where internet is inaccessible by any means like villages, jungles, mountains etc etc. This will also help in providing internet during natural disaster. Another benefit from this project is medical facilities, weather forecasting will be available to the persons who are in these remote areas. So the development of this project started in Canterbury, New Zealand on June 2013. It was a pilot project. So they started with using simple weather balloons and transponder attached to it but after launching they found that it cannot sustain for longer duration as it explodes. So they developed better materials for balloons so that is can sustain in that level at least for a month. Then the next problem can with stability. There are different patterns of wind flow in that level and the stability was a question mark without a closed loop control system. So they attached an impeller with the balloon so that it can blow in air and a valve so that it can expel the air inside. So when the air is blown inside the balloon rises and when air is blown out the balloon descends. The stability of balloon can be controlled with ascending and descending because it is found that is stratosphere two layers of wind flow in opposite direction so by ascending and descending the stability can be maintained. Now this balloons are solar powered and the temperature in the stratosphere fluctuates from -3 to 29.6 C. The problem that arrived is at such a low temperature Li ion batteries do not give there optimum performance so the solution was using the heat generated form the electronics components and keeping the entire setup in a insulated box wrapped with insulating sheets developed by NASA. So with is the temperature problem is solved and the battery gave great performance.There will be large number of balloons revolving around the earth like small balloon satellites and providing continuous internet due to continuous circulation of balloons. Another major problem faced was signal reception, the balloon while travelling rotates about its own axis so we get bipolar signal the was solved by using two antennas,
one will receive signal when the wave is in x-direction and the other when it is is y-direction if we use a single antenna then we wont get any signal. Recently Google as leased an hanger in California for its second phase of its research and testing. This is any excellent project for the betterment of humanity. If this project succeeds the world will be better connected. Thanks to Google for seeding these kind for projects and making our lives easier. 

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