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Wi-Fi From The Sky
Makarand writes "Some companies think that the answer to providing ubiquitous
broadband access is to have telecom gear float high in the sky.
High-tech blimps, called Stratellites, could be used by ISPs to carry
their telecom equipment as high as 13 miles, far above commercial
air traffic and turbulent weather
according to this article on
ABC News. At this height the Stratellite
could serve an area of around 300,000 sq miles. Subscribers will
merely need to put a small antenna outside and get broadband.
The Stratellites will be perfect spheres and carry all electronic
equipment within the Kevlar fabric and will not have any external
fins or gondolas attached. Companies are already developing
Wi-Fi sytems that could operate over tens of miles and these
systems could be used on these Stratellites."
do I have to say it. Use birds.
sig
Does that mean I'll be able to get an 802.11b signal in a plane? That would pretty much eradicate the problems of installing internet gear in each plane - just put a little antenna up to the window and boom, you're surfin'.
What's your damage, Heather?
A lot of people will now be able to listen to free music anywhere, via internet radio.
:)
There goes the RIAA. Also, this could cause us to lose our hearing of the sounds usually omitted from the tracks during MP3 encoding.
And what about radio waves everywhere? And people instant messsaging each other non-stop?
I know it's kind of scary and weird, but this future could all be possible in under five years. And once we get to wi-fi everywhere, there's no going back! And hackers will be able to DOS my toaster.
I for one, hope this development takes time
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Okay, so you cant use WiFi on a commercial flight because it has a possibility of jamming the aircraft's comms and tracking. Wonder what, if anything, will be the consequence of flying through medium-high (it has to have a bit of juice to reach 13 miles through clouds and whatnot, right?) intensity WiFi transmissions?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I would have thought there is some air movement up there, and it actaully has to get through the turbulent layer in the first place, so I presume it has some means of propulsion for station keeping....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Forbes talked about their list of 85 world-changing ideas.
:) Why? Because Wi-Fi will do to cell phones what cable/dsl did to land-line dial-up. Man I was just imagining all levels of students using wi-fi tablets in school and that's kind of messed up....
Wi-Fi is coming up, and that will be the biggest world-changing things ever in the future. Imagine always being connected to everybody else in the world who you'd want to be connected to. How screwed up is that?
Oh wait. Cell phones can do that. Damn. Oh well, it doesn't mean I'm going to let this post go waste!
!
Cover your eyes and click this link!
It could be a decent solution to the last mile problem but...
:). In that case, 4 or 5 competing Wifi-from-the-sky balloons (remember, each one has upto a 300,000 square mile range) could well make it impossible to setup a personal wireless LAN on the ground.
[ From the article: ]
The other advantage of Sanswire's setup, says Molen, is that Stratellites will use a wireless connection scheme known as 802.11 or "WiFi."
I'm guessing the "advantage" is that they don't intend paying license fees for the 2.4GHz spectrum
It's a good idea -- as long as they use their own (rented) portion of the spectrum, and leave the 2.4 GHz commons to us commoners.
ATG came up with a similar idea some time ago - doesn't look like they've got as far as a prototype yet tho - their design is a more usual blimp shape rather than spherical mind ...
...
ATG
Personally, I'd love one of their large Skycat's - imagine a beo.. I mean it'd make a great house
How many 802.11b freqs are there? How ever many there are that's how many users one balloon is limited to supporting.
In the irony dept, Newmarket is north of Toronto, up Highway .. 404.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
On weekends, I live in the mountains. Mountain villages with their 80, 100, sometimes 200 inhabitants aren't interesting for telcos, so the only possible Net connection around here is 56k (at 35 kbps because of bad line quality). Additionally, this costs about EUR 2/hour during the day and EUR 0.5/hour at night because local calls are still pretty expensive around here.
Even if these blimps can only give each subscriber 64k (at a flat rate), that'd already be unbeatable in this area.
Note how it's made out of Kevlar? What else is made from Kevlar? Bullet proof vests!
The kind used in bullet proof vests used by the secret government's storm troopers!
The kind used in bullet proof vests worn by the secret government's storm troopers which protect their mind control equipment!
The kind used in bullet proof vests worn by the secret government's storm troopers which protect their mind control equipment as it floats 13 miles above the earth!
The kind used in bullet proof vests worn by the secret government's storm troopers which protect their mind control equipment as it floats 13 miles above the earth beaming their mind control rays into you!
/me adds another layer of tinfoil to his hat.
Trolling is a art,
Read the RFC and they have one with QoS as well
-jon
The Area of the uk is about 244,000km. This is small compared to the radius that this sphrere in the sky could serve!
Considering BT's reluctance to ugrade rural exchanges for ADSL broadband (including mine, I have to get my broadband from Telewest), this could kick start true broadband Britain.
It could even DOUBLE our download capacity. So that we'll be able to read all the dupes on /..
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Lets try to keep the math simple
300,000 sq miles, in a circle would be a radius of rougly 300 miles. With the unit 10 miles in in the air the distance between end point and blimp would be a bit over 300 miles. I don't know of any WiFi that has that kinda range. So you can get a 10 mile antanea on a blimp 10 miles in the air and reach a house directly under the blimp. WOOHOO hurray for progress.
Now I hope and pray that I will But today I am still, just a bill
If you look on the web site of the manufacturer you can find this picture where it is clear that those things on the side of the sphere are combination propeller/stearing vane modules.
:)
BTW does anyone else think that the picture on their front page makes the thing look like the Death Star (tm)
-jon
I predict it will never happen.
-
The last time Slash dot covered this I posted a link to the air ship list (I have some weird friends) I got this response
6 &mode=flat&tid=126&threshold
I don't know if you were watching the list a couple weeks ago when a related
press release came up.
If you weren't--I said it was kind of neat and supplied a link to the
Sanswire site so people could see pictures and read the data. A number of
people thought it was a hyped lie, because 1) they've seen this hype and
others before and 2) Sanswire claimed the hull is made of Kevlar. Kevlar
(like all aramids) has problems being formed into any kind of cloth suitable
for holding lift gas--see the experts for what they are, has to due with
brittleness or something. If the problem were solved, it would be a big deal
and the company that did it could do more than just launch a com craft.
I've inquired with the company about what they are selling--can I buy an
account at what price. I figured that puts them on the spot to give answers.
All this was before Dec 11, the test date in Arizona. You see that post
toward the end, by the guy who said he saw it there in AZ and heard someone
claim it blew away?
Of course it could be that it did go on an unscheduled flight but was
brought down eventually. Or that could be pure embroidery.
But Sanswire is less visible on the net. The "Stratellite" page is being
reconstructed. As it might be after a successful test--or as it might be
forever, after an unsuccessful one.
I wrote the CEO, sounding nervous. We'll see what his flunkies say.
Have you heard any more about it?
The basic idea is perfectly great. Maybe not with a Kevlar hull, but if that
wasn't a lie then they did make it fly after all. Well somebody's got to
make the breakthrough someday.
I thought all those Venetian blind things by the props were the solar panels
but I went to the manufacturer's site and they were featured on other craft
that weren't supposed to be solar powered. Maybe they are the radiators for
the engines?
As nobody at slashdot pointed out clearly, winds at high altitude may be
fast but because the air is thin a strong enough engine on a
well-streamlined enough hull can hope to overcome them. It would be about
two scale heights, a seventh or so surface density--Roughly, take whatever
speed the wind is blowing at 20 km up and divide it by three to get an idea
of the equivalent sea level wind.
> From: Christopher Blood
> Reply-To: chris@sonictrout.com
> Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 21:40:23 -0500
> To: airship-list@lists.colorado.edu
> Subject: Slashdot | Airships Tested As Two-Way Telecom Beacons
>
> Thought this was of interest. It's a good idea.
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/17/00120
> =1
> d=1>
>
>
.
Such a concept might be good for the average user who only surfs and does email and the occasional download, but this would absolutely totally suck for online gamers. If memory serves me right, latency for satellite net access is something like 100ms per kilometer. at 13 miles (roughly 20 kilometers), you'd be looking at 2000 ms minimum just to reach the device, and at least 2000ms from the device to the server. No thanks....
It's better to burn out than to fade away
Some more links on the story itself:
Helium is an inert gas. It doesn't burn, nor does it support combustion. Hydrogen fell out of favor as a balloon filling very quickly after the Hindenburg disaster.
Other than initial outlay, for most purposes, the satellite solution still seems the most viable to me.
Of course lag times are a bitch when you're playing Quake or IL2. This is a real issue to me and others, but totally irrelevant to the average net user.
Maybe 'neutrino radio' zapped directly through the earth?
KFG
speed of light (in free space) 186,000 mps
13 m/186,000mps = 69 MICROseconds
-jon
Skystation
You can't make them stationary..
Tie them to ground.. The tie down cable becomes an aviation hazard.
Thirteen (13) mile long cables of any strength are somewhat heavy.
Volume needed to lift ~10 pounds to 75,000 ft requires a balloon 30 to 40feet in diameter.
Let them float, they get blown around (world) by the jet streams. (Lots of surface area * 100 m/s winds).
Tendency to come down in unwanted places (Insurance companies nightmare).
(I.E. High tension power lines, Expressways, Planes in flight, Tall buildings, etc.)
Try to make them stationary under own power. Not!!
Bigger == More surface area to catch wind == More engine/more weight == Never going to happen!!
retraction? :)
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
You think this is a real proposal, or just a trial balloon?
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
The Japanese Government has a similar project, and it's further along. They want to go up to 60,000 feet. At higher altitudes, there's less wind pressure to fight while stationkeeping.
Who is the idiot that thought up the term WiFi?!?
Makes it sound like wireless stereo gear.
I'll bet it was that Ralsky bastard! Let's sign him up for more stuff! To the Lists!
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Enemies of the state? Do you mean terrorists, the types of weapons they have access too aren't going to work against something 13 miles in the sky.....and as for foreign powers, getting their fighters over our land to shoot at these things would likely be a call to WWIII - falling debris from this balloons would be the least of your worries in that case.
In that discussion it was quite apparent that using satellietes wasn't an alternative.
They calculated that they'd need 10 stratellites to cover the US. IIRC the satellite based digital radio network in the US is planned to use 3 satellites. (No you can't cover the entire hemisphere with one.) And since a geosyncronous satellite is so far away it requires bulky antennas and lots of electricity. Both is stuff you really don't want on mobile systems. (Even Iridium lost out pretty much because of the bulkyness, and they were LEO IIRC.)
Basically you can think of stratellites as a cross between satellites and cell towers. They can cover a wide area like satellites, but are maintainable like cell towers. (From the interview it's said that ones they are finished a stratellite would only need a one person crew to bring one down, do maintainence and send it on it's way again.)
Phase array antennas may solve some of the problems, but a problem I see with WiFi or any other wireless tech that uses a contention based modulation scheme, is that the collision domain becomes so large with such great line of sight. The article claims they will be using WiFi gear, and at 13 miles, would be service 300,000 square miles of area. Assuming a best case scenario, what do you think the throughput is going to be like for a few thousand subscribers sharing a, nominally, 11Mbps link? =)
Router crash kills 8, film at 11.
not enough... do the math
Strattelites are supposed to be 7.5 to 13 miles in the sky with a range of 5-10 miles (all the different press releases aren't so clear)... or about (root sum of the squares) 9-18 miles from the strat to the most distant point.
phased-array only gets you 9 __KM__, or under 7 miles
That, plus Sanswire has a bad reputation to overcome.
The interference from a WiFi-equipped laptop one foot away from a signal cable passing through the plane is millions of times stronger than a stratospheric communication platform hovering a several miles above it.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Directional antenna arrays lets you re-use frequencies efficiently. Since the platform is more-or-less equally distant from all ground terminals it solves the near-far problem and allows the use of arrays with relatively weak side-lobe attenuation.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Wi-Fi only has a few channels. These balloons, at high altitude, are going to be in range of literally tens of thousands of wi-fi emitters, not to mention 2.4GHz (and presumably 5GHz) cordless phones. Microwave ovens also operate on this spectrum - how many little leaks will there be. Remember, this is on Part-15 spectrum (at least in the US) where *anyone* can set up as many transmitters as they want!
Even with steerable phased array antennas, the interference problem seems insurmountable in urban areas. You would need a WHOLE LOT of great big antennas (many meters - don't have time to do the detailed calcs) and even then many areas are unlikely to work.
Either something is being left unsaid, or.. I smell a possible scam.
Does anyone have information that would contradict this interference argument?
The only good weather is bad weather.
The key to ubiquitous access, as demonstrated by Slashdot, is redundancy.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
I think you may be on to something here. Only potential problem is that the billboard company will probably charge some exorbitant rental fee or may seek to enter the market themselves and royally screw it up by failing at it and leaving a black eye on the idea.
Hammer of Truth
There was another company looking to piggy-back on the National Weather Service's twice-daily balloon sounding probes to provide cellular service in unserved areas. The latex balloons climb to extreme altitudes, and then often hang for 24 hours or more without moving much (according to the article) before bursting. If the relay balloons float at similar altitudes, they would require little power for stationkeeping.
Big deal, you bar air traffic from the area. We may soon be doing the same to generate electricity, with tethers perhaps 3 miles long; check out gyromills for a jolt to your weltanschauüng. Have you looked at the balloons used to loft cosmic-ray, infrared and the cosmic-background radiation experiments lately? Boomerang flew at 120,000 feet, thus requiring a balloon several times the volume required to loft a payload to a mere 65,000 feet. There is a lot of established expertise, and while this can't be considered a trivial exercise it isn't going to require much new work.Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
The collision domain is both temporal and angular. If the system has a single, omnidirectional antenna, your criticism is dead on-target; however, only fools would think about trying to do that, as even cellular towers are far more sophisticated. What the balloon would likely have is either a microwave lens antenna (or a large array of them) built into the balloon (you can make something with a very high refractive index at microwave frequences using a bit of aluminum foil in a very light plastic foam) or a completely synthetic aperture phased-array antenna. The former is probably heavier, the latter requires lots of DSPs - but if Iridium sats can do it, a balloon probably can. What the antennas do for you is to allow two transmitters separated by a sufficient angle to be heard separately and distinctly even if they are transmitting simultaneously; they do not collide any more than the images of two stars shining simultaneously have to collide on an astrophotograph unless they are very close together in angle.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
This does suggest a nasty way to DoS an entire cellphone network. I hope nobody thinks of it... oops, too late!
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Heheh... for the confused: Hacking with a Pringles tube
Random is the New Order.
Since they are supposed to be pretty much autonomous I recon you could handle all or at least several of them at once. Probably you'd have a couple of bases around the US for instance and let them maintain 3-4. And have one or so as a "hot backup" and use for replacement.
;-)
But yeah, of course it's stupid to trust the guys behind the project right out. Naturally they're biased. But I do think that satellites are a bit too expensive for the purpose. Irridium would seem to provide good support for that theory at any rate. And there was another similar project called
Skystation going as well. That one has backing from Lockheed Martin. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more projects in the same genre.
And regarding the middle of the Atlantic I think what is really needed is better interoperability between systems. So when you're at home or in a city you use a very high speed link. The more rural areas you go to the lower speeds you get. But you should still be able to have one box that does it all. (Although it might need several different technologies implemented.)
But yeah, fast wireless on a remote island would be neat. I'd rather have it out in a park nearby though.
That's a valid concern, but the microwave relay towers and cell towers we have now in remote locations are an even easier target, and carry more important traffic than typical Internet data...and right now, when they fail in a given area, we're back to copper phone lines (if any, and assuming no one has also taken the trouble to destroy switching centers).....the same would hold true for wifi balloons.
Also, these are for remote areas: the likely thing to be hit if they fell would be tumbleweeds, grain crops, hills, etc. Of course, someone could design parachutes for the large components to deploy if the gas bag failed....