SkyOrbiter UAVs Could Fly For Years and Provide Global Internet Access

Zothecula writes The internet has become a critical means of communication during humanitarian crises and a crucial everyday tool for people around the world. Now, a Portuguese company wants to make sure everyone has access to it. Quarkson plans to use SkyOrbiter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to transmit internet access "to every corner of the world."

Comments

Re:satellites?

[petermgreen]

Sattelites come in two main varieties both of which have their problems.

GEO sattelites can cover the world with a handful of sattelites but they are a LONG way from anything on the ground and a long way up the gravity well. That limits the data rate possible with a given antenna size and RF bandwidth, it also makes them expensive to launch and makes the latency high (best case for round trip time on a GEO based sattelite internet service is ~500ms, protocols for on-demand upstream bandwidth allocation will make that much worse).

LEO sattelites have much lower radio path loss and much lower theoretical latency but each sattelite has a relatively small coverage area and worse the sattelites are constantly moving which makes use of high gain antennas difficult, requires frequent handoffs, makes it impractical to focus coverage on areas with the most demand.

A flying platform would be even closer to the ground than an LEO sattelite and would stay in a more or less fixed position allowing it to serve a fixed area. The question is can you make an economical permanent flying platform (either by lighter than air flight or by heavier than air flight with solar power)