Since the invention of the incredible internet, several
companies have come forward to provide its access to around thousands of
billion people around the world on a rental basis. Now the availability of this
at almost all locations around the world is a must for being up to date with
the recent advances in various fields and is even the most needed for social
networking that the entire youth is getting attracted to. Perfect and full use
of smart phones require this precious internet availability. But most of
internet providers in the developing countries provide a faster connection for
a high price and only give limited amount of data to be accessed by the user.
This condition becomes worst in the underdeveloped countries.
Hence
the Google has come up with a promise to provide internet connection to those
two-third of world's population who have no access to it due to unaffordable
rental or due to unavailability of the such service due to poor economic condition
of the state. It has named this public welfare project as 'Project Loon'. The
internet connection will be provided to these people in rural & remote
areas using a network of balloons. The balloons are completely solar powered.
According to Google these balloons will float in the stratosphere (located
between 10km to 60km) which is twice as high as the height above the cloud
occupying region where the airplanes travel. The people's building will have a
special internet antenna attached to their building which will help them access
internet since these will help to connect to these balloons provided with
antennas which are built with specialized radio frequency technology that is
said to use ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical)radio bands and most will
employ 2.4 & 5.8GHz bands. These signals will then be passed from one
balloon to other balloon and ultimately will get connected to the global
internet. These ISM bands are the one's which are used in RF process heating
and microwave ovens and these signal emissions are powerful and create
electromagnetic interference and may disrupt the radio communication using the
same frequency and hence the equipment design should be able to overcome the
interference.
In the
stratosphere(the name itself is derived due to the presence of different layers
of wind) the wind blows in different direction in each layer and varies in
speed too. This concept is utilized here to get the balloon to move in right
direction by adjusting its height to the required layer which has its wind
blowing in the direction which the balloon has to move in. Hence the Project
Loon according to Google uses software algorithm that decides the direction the
balloons need to go in and suitably alters its height to be in the required
layer by performing an analysis and is said to travel around 20km above Earth's
surface. The speed of wind in stratosphere generally varies between 5 and
20mph. Thus several balloons use this software algorithm to form a large
communication network. But the balloon envelope design requires much work due
to the harsh conditions in the stratosphere and hence Google has opted to use
polyethylene plastics since it can withstand higher pressure which occurs as it
reaches a higher altitude to float. This aims even to help during the natural
calamities. Fact that makes its implementation even more worthy is the area
which it can cover and Google says it to be about 40 km in diameter with the
speed that nears to what a 3G connection provides, that's awesome!
The
project testing has just been started in this month of June 2013 in Newzealand. According to Google the pilot test is being done in Christchurch and Canterbury.
If this provides a great success then
the balloons will built in a large number and
spread across the world serving all
the people
Watch the video to know more about how it
works:
To know more about it and where are they going to proceed
for next testing to, visit http://www.google.com/loon
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