Google Project Loon: Balloon powered Internet access

Google and Raven Industries have announced that they are collaborating to provide high-speed wireless Internet accessibility to rural, remote and underserved areas of the world.

Google plans to use Raven-designed and developed high-tech balloons as part of its new project for balloon-powered Internet access, Project Loon.

Google said in a blog post that the project is in its very early days, explaining that they built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster.

“If successful, Project Loon could be an affordable, scalable way to help address the digital divide in South Africa, a large country with many towns and communities still isolated from broadband Internet access,” said Luke Mckend, Country Director, Google South Africa.

“Last year’s Internet Matters study by World Wide Worx showed that the Internet contributes up to 2 percent (or R59-billion) of the country’s GDP. We think that more Internet access can boost economic development and job creation, which is highly pertinent in South Africa’s current climate”.

The full Google announcement provided below:

The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem.

There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity—jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month’s income.

Solving these problems isn’t simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we’re unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access.

We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below.

It’s very early days, but we’ve built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster.

As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters.

The idea may sound a bit crazy—and that’s part of the reason we’re calling it Project Loon—but there’s solid science behind it.

Balloons, with all their effortless elegance, present some challenges. Many projects have looked at high-altitude platforms to provide Internet access to fixed areas on the ground, but trying to stay in one place like this requires a system with major cost and complexity.

So the idea we pursued was based on freeing the balloons and letting them sail freely on the winds. All we had to do was figure out how to control their path through the sky.

We’ve now found a way to do that, using just wind and solar power: we can move the balloons up or down to catch the winds we want them to travel in.

That solution then led us to a new problem: how to manage a fleet of balloons sailing around the world so that each balloon is in the area you want it right when you need it. We’re solving this with some complex algorithms and lots of computing power.

Now we need some help—this experiment is going to take way more than our team alone. This week we started a pilot program in the Canterbury area of New Zealand with 50 testers trying to connect to our balloons.

This is the first time we’ve launched this many balloons (30 this week, in fact) and tried to connect to this many receivers on the ground, and we’re going to learn a lot that will help us improve our technology and balloon design.

Over time, we’d like to set up pilots in countries at the same latitude as New Zealand. We also want to find partners for the next phase of our project—we can’t wait to hear feedback and ideas from people who’ve been working for far longer than we have on this enormous problem of providing Internet access to rural and remote areas.

We imagine someday you’ll be able to use your cell phone with your existing service provider to connect to the balloons and get connectivity where there is none today.

This is still highly experimental technology and we have a long way to go—we’d love your support as we keep trying and keep flying! Follow our Google+ page to keep up with Project Loon’s progress.

Project Loon team prepares for launch in the pre-dawn frost near Lake Tekapo, New Zealand.

The Project Loon team prepares for launch at sunrise in New Zealand.

avionics software, flight sensors, and power systems. The avionics software is used to coordinate with mission control and perform safety checks, the flight sensors measure the balloon’s state and the environment – things like GPS position, barometric pressure and temperature – and the power systems regulate solar charging, power usage, and battery safety. Above, the equipment is readied for launch.

The stratosphere is great for solar panels because there are no clouds to block the sun. It takes 4 hours for the solar panels to charge the battery during the day, and that power is sufficient to keep all the flight systems working 24 hours a day.

The orange peanut clamp is used to weigh down the envelope so the balloon doesn’t float away while final preparations are being made. A peanut is a clamp commonly used in the launch of high-altitude balloons. The balloon is launched by removing the peanut.

Project Loon team member Bill Rogers fills a balloon with helium while Paul Acosta monitors inflation. Each balloon requires 12 tanks of helium, the amount of which can be used to control how quickly the balloon ascends.

Installing the altitude control system.

Project Loon balloons use super-pressure envelopes, meaning the volume of the balloon remains constant, like a mylar party balloon. This allows the balloons to stay afloat for much longer than a zero-pressure (variable volume) balloon.

A team of at least 6 people is required to launch a balloon. This team includes a launch commander to lead the team and coordinate with Mission Control, several people to do ground checks on various electronic components, and someone to set the balloon up for launch and inspect the envelope.

Project Loon sails through the stratosphere where there are different wind layers. We can maneuver our balloons by identifying the wind layer with the desired speed and direction and then adjusting its altitude so it’s floating in that layer. We currently use wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The Project Loon team monitors their balloons 24 hours a day, from launch to recovery, and shares position information and projections with local aviation authorities.

A custom-designed Internet antenna attached to a user’s house allows them to receive Internet service from Project Loon. The internet antenna’s balloon-inspired design is a playful symbol of the Project Loon network.

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