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Wireless Networking The Internet Hardware Technology

UK Testing Wireless Broadband Via Airship 222

Posted by timothy from the hope-no-one-shoots-this-idea-down dept.
fruey writes "A team from York University, UK are about to test high altitude platforms, according to this article, as a way of bringing high-speed internet services to computer users in remote areas out of reach of broadband. They plan to use solar powered engines to keep the aerial platforms in position. The Capanina site have some more information about this stratospheric broadband experiment. More technical stuff can be found at the York University website This technology could deliver broadband communications at data rates up to 120Mbit/s! Screw cable and xDSL, when will stratospheric be available near me?"
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UK Testing Wireless Broadband Via Airship More

UK Testing Wireless Broadband Via Airship

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  • Out of the way UK communities (Score:5, Funny)

    by GonzoDave ( 743486 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:44AM (#8042773)
    UK are about to test high altitude platforms, according to this article, as a way of bringing high-speed internet services to computer users in remote areas out of reach of broadband

    I assume this means backwards places like the Fens, Channel Islands, Welsh valleys and Liverpool. It might help to teach them what a computer and electricity are for first.
    • I think they meant the Falkland Islands... they will need lots of airships though.

    • Re:Out of the way UK communities (Score:5, Funny)

      by ozbon ( 99708 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:02AM (#8042960) Homepage
      Well, Liverpool certainly knows what computers are. They're the high-value items that thieving little sods can use to buy drugs.
    • I assume this means backwards places like the Fens, Channel Islands, Welsh valleys and Liverpool. It might help to teach them what a computer and electricity are for first.
      Hmm. Would this be the same Liverpool that was recently made European City of Culture [liverpoolculture.com]?

      Agree with you on the Channel Islands though :-)
      • Hmm. Would this be the same Liverpool that was recently made European City of Culture?

        Says more about the City of Culture award than about Liverpool.

        Baskingstoke will probably be next.
    • As a resident of the Welsh valleys, I must point out that you're wrong. We all have computers. It's the most convenient way of getting sheep pron.
    • Never mind that, I work in York and have a friend who lives within walking distance of the University... No cable or DSL on his street! It's bizzare that a reasonably large city like York has such poor broadband access. I'm not sure of the reasons for this - York has quite a huigh student population, who probably can't afford broadband, also a lot of the pavement/roads are ancient (vikings/romans etc) and you have to have archaelogosts involved any time there's any sort of excavation so the cable company is

  • Blast from the past (Score:3, Funny)

    by Wingchild ( 212447 ) <brian.kern@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:44AM (#8042774)
    I wonder if an airship (or zeppelin) based broadband modem would be appropriately called a `z-modem`... ;)

  • Cheaper Broadband (Score:3, Funny)

    by AyeFly ( 242460 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:44AM (#8042775)
    Why don't they just use five ounce birds carrying packets inside of cocounts?

  • Lag times (Score:2, Interesting)

    by soapbox ( 695743 )
    Satellites always had terrible lag times for transmission, so this would be much better...but c'mon, the British weather sucks--how long before these little "microlight" planes get knocked out of the sky by wind, attacked by birds, or grounded due to foul weather? Just put money into running coax/POTS or long-distance 802.11-type service.

    • Re:Lag times (Score:5, Informative)

      by Escape Tangent ( 594982 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:11AM (#8043042) Homepage
      but c'mon, the British weather sucks--how long before these little "microlight" planes get knocked out of the sky by wind, attacked by birds, or grounded due to foul weather?

      Actually, theoretically never. Not to give you an RTFA, but the craft hovers at an altitude of about 12 miles -- well into the stratosphere [wikipedia.org]. The stratosphere begins at about 15km (9mi) from the Earth's surface and is composed of less dense, relatively stable air. I say relatively because there is a lot of lateral mixing but nothing quite as turbulent as what we experience on the surface. The highest clouds form not far from the tropopause (cirrus, stratocumulus, et al), so weather and harsh winds would have no effect on the craft at all.

  • ...to hack into one of these babies and land it on my roof.
  • Something tells me we'll be getting more "UFO" sightings than usual if this plan gets the green light.

    Better make those airships bulletproof.

  • Tech support response (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wattsman ( 75726 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:46AM (#8042798)
    "Why is my net connection down?"
    "The router crashed."
    "Can't you reboot it or something."
    "No, I mean it literally crashed. Some bird flew into it and the sucker fell from the sky. We'll be getting a replacement up in an hour or so."

  • Aerial Platforms - Safe? (Score:5, Funny)

    by CowboyBob500 ( 580695 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:46AM (#8042799) Homepage
    It might bring a whole new meaning to "my network's gone down"

    Bob

  • New Meaning (Score:2, Funny)

    by shlomo ( 594012 )
    Gives new meaning to the term "Server Crash".

  • This was an idea I wished Sun would pursue (Score:3, Interesting)

    by corebreech ( 469871 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:47AM (#8042804) Journal
    It would be called the Sun phone. What they'd do is launch a big balloon and have it hover over your large metropolitan areas. The phone gives you seemless voice capabiities, and then you plug it into your computer and you've got hi-speed access. And then the really cool feature... the thing lights up, just like the real Sun (only this Sun would be visible at night.)

    Yeah, it's just a marketing gimmick I guess, but it seemed like such a good fit. And besides, what else is Sun going to do? Manufacture over-priced blade servers?
  • How many of these do they need in the sky for redundancy purposes? just in case a few of them fail, and what happens when they fall to earth...*boink* I thought people liked to star gaze, not look at swarms of platforms 'floating' in the sky.

    wouldn't orbiting satelites stay 'up' longer.... oh wait they do
    • Tried stargazing from a major city lately? The view is less than impressive. The magnificent sight of the Milky Way is sadly becoming a thing of the past for a growing part of the world's population. I housemate of mine once asked if I had ever been to the southern hemisphere and he remarked that the milky Way is the most amazing sight. I had to tell him that from the back of my parents' house in rural Ireland I used to stand and look at the thing every night.

      I digress.

      Light polution is a more press

  • In production already? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Walkiry ( 698192 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:47AM (#8042807) Homepage
    I had heard of these things before (like here [intercomms.net], but it's the first time I see anyone talking about it seriously other than in future, vague projects and predictions.

    It's like low-cost, low-tech satellite communications (less area covered, less powerful transmission units, but cheaper too), the only thing I see as a possible problem is the interference with air traffic in higher populated areas (probably the reason why they're starting with these more remote locations for implementation).

    Damn cool if you ask me.
  • That the British now have Airships, which previously only existed in Final Fantasy?!

    DAMN YOU.
    • It got easy after they found the Float stone (it was one of the rocks atop Stonehenge, just nobody noticed it before). The sad part is that your IT tech support will be run by Tiamat. The WarMech will be the front-line helpdesk (i.e., you have to traverse that beast to actually get to where you wanna be anyway..)

  • Logical (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wi-fi using this method had to come. At some 12 miles above the earth's surface, the last-mile just became 12. Being rural is a legitamate choice but a computer is rather useless without Internet access these days.

    I can only hope DWO will be supported. Unfortunate for this otherwise solid choice otherwise, but it could become the breaking point.

    In the end the only other alternative is to create my own. A real possibility in that I can stand by my decision - win or lose.

  • Local satellite replacement. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ursg ( 196096 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:50AM (#8042843)
    Nasa's project Helios [nasa.gov] (the unmanned solar-powered "flying wing") has had a similar Idea behind it:
    Why clutter geostationary orbit when you can have unmanned planes circling metropolitian areas? Using solar power, these flying relays could operate nearly indefinitely at a fraction of the price.

    The biggest problem that remains: What to do at night, when there is no sun powering the Solar Cells? Helios used Fuel Cells for backup power, but the technology is not yet advanced enough to sustain flight for longer than ~1 week.

  • Re: Airship Broadband (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Silwenae ( 514138 ) *
    I wonder how the latency and ping time would be.

    Having used Hughes' DirecDuo / DirecPC 4 years ago before broadband was available at my home, it left the broadband experience wanting.

    It was ok for downloading large files, couldn't do online gaming at all, and surfing the web was just ok - you could feel the few seconds where you sent the URL over, but once it got it sent the browser downloaded it quickly enough.

    I guess it would depend how their NOC worked - but I still have to imagine this is only good

    • Re: Airship Broadband (Score:5, Informative)

      by praedor ( 218403 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:59AM (#8042923) Homepage

      It wont be the same. There will be a latency but it wont be anything close to that with satellite internet. Think about it. They are talking balloons at, what, and altitude of 10 miles or so? (I haven't yet read the article but for this I don't need to). Your DirectPC satellites are geosynchronous at worst...you're talking ~28,000 miles.


      Let's see, speed of light traversing 20+/- miles (up and back down each way) and this being factored into latency, vs speed of light traversing 56,000+/- miles (up and back each way). See a HUGE difference there?


      The latency would be/will be a nonissue.

      • Re: Airship Broadband (Score:3, Informative)

        by praedor ( 218403 )

        OK, having read the article, I was too simplistic, but not enough to change the argument. The airship operates at ~12 miles and covers a 40 mile circle. If it has a ground station directly below it (roughly speaking), then if you are on the edge of that 40 mile coverage, the max range your wireless signal would need to traverse is ~42 miles each way. So a two-way comm would traverse ~84 miles. This is still MUCH less than the ~112,000 mile range a two-way comm signal must traverse via satellite internet

      • It wont be the same. There will be a latency but it wont be anything close to that with satellite internet. Think about it. ... Let's see, speed of light traversing 20+/- miles (up and back down each way) and this being factored into latency, vs speed of light traversing 56,000+/- miles (up and back each way). See a HUGE difference there? The latency would be/will be a nonissue.

        I had satellite internet for a while and latency was a real issue. But let's do some math:

        56000 miles x 5280 feet = 295680000 f

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:54AM (#8042878)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Microlights (Score:2, Insightful)

      by famebait ( 450028 )
      Are you joking? The airships in question would of course not be mere blimps but dirigibles, using solar power and propellers to stay in place.

      There may be advantages to microlights, but the effect of one losing power and falling down on your head (or house) is not one of them...

    • Re:Microlights (Score:3, Informative)

      by Zeinfeld ( 263942 )
      It's probably worth mentioning that the article is focussing on microlights for this, not airships. Microlights are very small aeroplanes, resembling (and not much different to) a hang-glider with an engine.

      Actually that is for testing purposes, they will fly microlights at low altitude. Presumably because it takes quite a bit of time getting a blimp up to 12 miles high and they are pretty pricey. You can do much more tweakage on a cheap microlight, send it up, test, bring it down, tweak, etc.

      The produc

  • services from Astra and Eutelsat and others already cover every bit of land from Iceland to Pakistan... at small prices. Try www.eutelsat.net to get some really low prices!! Just a dish, dvb modem, et voila'! Great stuff!

  • Inclimate Weather (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SunCrushr ( 153472 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:03AM (#8042967) Homepage
    Sure its fast, but if its stratospheric, its usefulness may be greatly effected by inclimate weather. Even cumulus clouds can greatly lower the bandwidth of wireless communication when transmitting between the stratosphere and the ground. It will be interesting to see how they deal with this issue.
    • I used to live in Manchester and had Sky digital. Every time it rained, i.e. frequently, there was a 50/50 chance that the digital TV signal would break up. It used to drive me frigging crazy. Kinda makes you wonder what's the point. All this money and hype going into this digital TV technology and they can't even transmit through a shower of rain.
  • There's more than one reason that this could be better than a satellite connection - the latency from the ride to space and back makes satellite-based Internet connectivity almost useless for anything but mail and web.

    Presumably, this will be a shorter bounce with less latency, provided they don't relay packets via satellite anyway from the airship..

  • Just to answer some questions (Score:5, Informative)

    by subjectstorm ( 708637 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:05AM (#8042989) Journal
    Q. Weather problems and air traffic?

    A. It's 12 miles up. that's well above commercial air traffic, and i suspect (although i'm too lazy to check) most weather problems.

    Q. Latency TImes?

    A. According to the article, those will be a hell of a lot lower than satellite. Also, it seems to be boasting a very, very high rate of transfer.

    Q. How many are needed for redundancy?

    A. Well, none. If it crashes it does. Kind of like how, if your ISP gets blowed up, you ain't got no internet. This isn't yet considered stable enough for long term solutions. it's mainly just cheap braodband for areas that don't have it, until they get it - if that makes sense. I see more military applications than anything, to be perfectly honest.

    • Re:Just to answer some questions (Score:4, Funny)

      by fuzzybunny ( 112938 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:16AM (#8043088) Homepage Journal
      If it crashes it does. Kind of like how, if your ISP gets blowed up, you ain't got no internet


      Yeah, but if my ISP explodes, I won't get half a ton of Cablecom telco equipment dropping through my skylight from 12 miles up.

      What's the terminal velocity of a wireless router anyway?

    • The problem is controlling the altitude in day vs night scenarios. During the night, you'll be much closer to the weather. The balloon can't fly nearly as high then, unless you want to control altitude by adding/dumping gas a lot.

    • It's 12 miles up. that's well above commercial air traffic, and i suspect (although i'm too lazy to check) most weather problems.

      Well, sure, the blimp will be above any bad weather. Meanwhile, the users will be below the aforementioned bad weather. Isn't that a problem?

    • Latency: 12[miles]=19.8[km], 19.8 [km] / c [km/s] = 19.8/300000 [s] = 0.000066s=0.066ms=660ns for the light to travel up. That's 1.66ms to get back down again, maybe a bit more because it's diagonal. Add the delay for 3 times (client, platform, isp) the wireless equipment and it's still pretty damn fast.

      Weather: there will not be a lot of turbulence or real storms, but there are pretty strong winds called jet streams and it's pretty cold up there. More information especially over here [grandbassin.net] and also a bit over [google.nl]

  • "Up to" 120Mbit/s? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by blorg ( 726186 )
    Makes me sceptical - I wonder if it's shared bandwith?

    This speed figure seemed to be just thrown out of a hat, with nothing to back it up. (It's also referenced on this CAPANINA project page [capanina.org], but again no more details.

    • You "wonder" if it's shared bandwidth? No, genius, every yokel in backwater UK gets their own 120Mbit zeppelin. It's all part of a conspiracy to blot out the SUN!

      With the costs not only of a wireless router, but also of a blimp, I'd say that dividing it into usable hard-limit chunks with guaranteed speeds would be stupid. Therefore, bandwidth will be shared.

      But the up-to probably refers to weather conditions. A thunderstorm underneath the blimp will likely impair functions.

  • Oh, the humanity! (Score:4, Funny)

    by RealErmine ( 621439 ) <commerceNO@SPAMwordhole.net> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:15AM (#8043079)
    How big are these airships?

    It is appropriate that the source of one's internet might also block out the sun for short periods of time, thus rendering it safe for geeks to venture outside.

    "Natural light! Get it off!"

  • Permanent Fliers (Score:5, Informative)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:20AM (#8043114) Homepage
    Heh, this made Slashdot. Cool. So, yeah. I know these guys.

    Basically, the airships is question are built by a company named Aerovironment (www.aerovironment.com). I've known about them for a while; one of my good friends works for the company. Really cool stuff; the basic idea is that this giant fixed wing circles around a rural area in the mid-to-upper atmosphere (where the air is thin enough to reduce drag, but thick enough to support lift) using solar power during the day and battery power at night. Then you drop some cell / wireless data relays on the bottom of the plane (UAV, to be more accurate), and poof: Regional visibility of a satellite relay, without the lag of communicating with a device being 22,500 miles away in geosynchronous orbit. That it's much cheaper to deploy the device (and possible to recover it as needed) is just gravy.

    Things haven't been trivial for Aerovironment -- they lost one of their fixed wings some time ago during a test flight in Hawaii -- but as far as I know, they're the leaders in developing UAV's that simply don't need to land.

    --Dan
    • Yeah. This is a very cool technology that looks like a low-cost, low-latency alternative to geosynchronous satellites.

      Nasa [nasa.gov] is apparently working on [nasa.gov] something similar.

      • The Helios Prototype was a unique electrically powered experimental lightweight flying wing developed by AeroVironment, Inc., under NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program.

  • A storm? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by anethema ( 99553 )
    I would like to see the engines keep an airship in position in a storm or gale force wind.

    Maybe a carbon nanotube tether is in order ;)

  • Can hardly wait! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by uradu ( 10768 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:26AM (#8043164)
    This is just great. Now we have to wait for two emerging technologies to mature: wireless broadband AND autonomous blimps. Not to mention the integration and ground control thereof. It's not like they're not having a hard enough time deploying wireless broadband from the top of a steel pole on a hill--pretty reliable and established mounting technology in most parts of the world--now they have to do it from a floating platform that has been pie-in-the-sky (pardon the pun) for decades. Yeah, it will happen Really Soon Now!
    • Yeah. Those airships will never work. Hell they'll even be talking about using them to provide arial camera shots of football games next. Hang on...
      • The unproven technology is not the blimp itself but its autonomous control and endurance, a blimp that will reliably hover above the same spot on earth without a tether for weeks on end, possibly much longer. All while up- and downlinking high speed data streams. That combination is unproven so far on any sort of larger scale. I do appreciate your attempt at humour though.
        • It's an interesting point, and I hate to give you an RTFA, but the blimp in the experiment was only for testing the principle of an arial platform. In practice it will be heavier-than-air UAVs that will be used, and they are a more established technology than autonomous blimps.
          • > In practice it will be heavier-than-air UAVs that will be used,
            > they are a more established technology than autonomous blimps

            In military use perhaps, but not in reliable commercial use. Once you start charging people for this service that thing better be up there 24/7. I don't think there's any commercial precedent for this combination of technology, UAV/blimp/any-old-flying-platform and high speed bidirectional data communications. It's one thing for NASA or the military to brute-force a solution

  • Gyromills... (Score:3, Informative)

    by F34nor ( 321515 ) * on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:29AM (#8043188)
    Gyromills [bbc.co.uk] would make a better platform and they would generate electricity at the same time.
  • "A large gathering of people have gathered to protest outside Slashdot HQ after the website linked to a test page hosted on the new wireless blimp. Within seconds, millions of geeks accessed it, crashing the blimp's navigational system, engine systems, and of course the web server itself. The blimp just missed the Pentagon by a mile or so, but people already have started to call Slashdot 'a bunch of geeky terrorists'."
  • It's not "York University". York University is in Canada. The department in question is part of "The University of York".

    Might seem petty, but it's a bit like calling MIT the Technology Institute of Massachusetts.

  • Crashing ISPs (Score:3, Funny)

    by Leroy_Brown242 ( 683141 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:07AM (#8043526) Homepage Journal

    This gives the term,"My ISP has crashed" new meaning.

  • Several places are testing these already. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @12:30PM (#8044485)
    Wind/storms/other aircraft: Flies at 10 miles, far above storms and other aircraft.

    What about the tether: 10 miles of rope, are you taking the piss?

    Weight: It's carrying capacity increases with the cube of it's size, the bigger the better.

    Power: Solar panels on top increase with the surface area. Batteries for holding position at night. Power increases with the square of the size, lifting capacity increases with the cube of the size, the bigger the better.

    Latency: 6x10^-8 seconds for the radio wave to travel.

    The Japanese have been testing them for a while now:

    http://www.jinjapan.org/trends98/honbun/ntj98030 6. html
    http://www.nal.go.jp/eng/newsletter/99winter /p09.h tm

    Less likely:
    http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom .html
  • That seems awfully small. By my calculations, a transmitter 12 mi = 19 km = 19000 m off the surface has line-of-sight to a radius nearly 500 km out. Granted, the most usable part of that would be where it's closest to being overhead, and signal power will attenuate quickly, but that's still an awful lot of lost coverage. Even ground-based FM radio towers get better.

    Hmmm, or would the limitation be in the ground-based client transmitters? Yeah, that's probably it. Ok, never mind me.

  • A tethered airship is used at lower altitudes to test the principle of an arial platform. In practice it will be heavier-than-air unmanned planes that will fly at the higher altitudes above the weather.

    What's it going to be next? Comments about airships bursting into flames?

  • How many places are "out of reach of broadband"? As opposed to "not profitable enough to enable broadband for"?

    Most places have landlines. Ok, I know there are some really remote locations that do not -- like Cwm Brefi [timesonline.co.uk]. Isn't it just a question of upgrading the existing telephone exchanges to increase coverage? No new wires, right?

    I don't much care whether my broadband comes via cable, DSL, or wireless. This airship idea sounds great but it's years off. I think I'm going to go door to door trying to r
  • blimps and dirigibles are considered by some to be obsolete technologies, but I think they are due for a resurgence. New materials make lighter than air and helium assisted airships more feasible, especially in unmanned applications like communications. The biggest problem with lighter than air ships is wind, which makes large manned crafts dangerous. But then again, we go flying around in giant metal jumbo jets, which seems a lot more dangerous than a large craft that can hover with it's engines idling.
  • The article (presentation) mentions they're targeting 802.16a (WMAN) as the network tech. That offers a max 155Mbps. Sounds like a lot, until you divide it among the entire city of York, which must share the band like one "wire" to the network. At 150K people, we're talking about 1Kbps per person, average - if even 1% hit the Net at once, like for WiVoIP at a football match, that's barely enough at 100Kbps per person, leaving zero bandwidth for any other activity in the city. This network would be best use
    • But...

      What about tempoary crowds. Like world cup soccer or american football superbowl.

      you have an event like this you bring in temporary help.

      • Temporary crowds seem more an argument for adhoc mesh networking, P2P, with sparse base station repeaters to ensure "critical mass" continuity. These HAPS blimps seem more like a permanent fixture of a network infrastructure. The problem is the high-power, which means a radus of over 25Km shares 155Mbps. Lower power 802.16a can carve up an area geographically, offering more 155Mbps segments to cover the area.

        Here in NYC, we're considering powering such a network every few blocks, attenuated into cylinders
  • Boy! A couple of smaller versions of this would be perfect for burning man!
  • Just when are we going to actually use or see this tech in use?

    It seems like on a regular occasion, we here on /. hear about wireless broadband this, blimp-based that. We have been hearing about it for what? At least 5 years. Yet the only wireless broadband I know of in my market (Phoenix, AZ) is Sprint's Broadband (ie, what was SpeedChoice), and they aren't accepting any new customers (not that I would use them - my friend down the street got it before they locked, and his upload rate is HORRIBLE).

    Come on,

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