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Wireless Networking Hardware IT

Broadband from Airships 180

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the yes-but-where-are-my-flying-cars dept.
rustbear writes "The BBC reports that researchers looking to the skies to provide super-fast internet access via airships have proved it can successfully operate a data rate link of 11Mbps. Trials were conducted using a 12,000 cubic metre balloon, flying at an altitude of around 24 kilometres for nine hours. 'Proving the ability to operate a high data rate link from a moving stratospheric balloon is a critical step in moving towards the longer term aim of providing data rates of 120Mbps,' said Dr David Grace, the project's principal scientific officer. 'Balloons hovering in the stratosphere could become an attractive alternative as consumers demand ever higher bandwidth", said Alan Gobbi, the acting manager of the York Electronic Centre. With each airship being able to support an area of 60 kilometres, there would only need to be "a handful" to offer complete coverage in the UK, he added. Trials of the technology will continue in Japan next year.'"
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Broadband from Airships More

Broadband from Airships

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  • this is great but... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tehwebguy ( 860335 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @04:47PM (#13830295) Homepage
    it doesn't seem like something you should always rely on, what about storms? i know in florida relying on something like this would be a disaster (i mean heck, my landline cable will likely be out after this 'cane hits this weekend!)
    • But the Midwest will suddenly gain a whole lot of bandwidth when the wind finally stops blowing the balloons...
      • Crackpot idea. The whole thing is full of nothing but Hot Air!
      • "with each airship being able to support an area of 60 kilometres, there would only need to be 'a handful' to offer complete coverage in the UK, he added."

        No one has pointed out that these are nano airships! An area of 60 Km^2 is a circle with a diameter of less then 9 Km, which means quite a large number to cover England, let alone the whole UK. This also means that the wireless equipment is smaller still.

        Good luck finding one when they blow away.

    • ...what about storms?
      Do they have them in the stratosphere?

    • Re:this is great but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) <Satanicpuppy@gma ... minus herbivore> on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @04:52PM (#13830357) Journal
      Storms...At 24 kilometers in the air? Not going to happen. That's in the stratosphere, well above even commerical airline flightpaths.

      The winds up there are more sedate, though they do exist, especially toward the tropics.
      • That's in the stratosphere, well above even commerical airline flightpaths.

        Yeah, but it's not out of the range of a rail-gun and I happen to know some bored/motivated college students who build them in their spare time.

      • Re:this is great but... (Score:5, Informative)

        by FooAtWFU ( 699187 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @05:07PM (#13830504) Homepage
        The issue is when there's a stormcloud between you and the stratosphere. Water is very good at blocking wireless signals.
        • Water is different from water steam, and both are only good at blocking certain radio frequencies as opposed to all wireless signals as you seem to infer. If they choose a suitable frequency, I wouldn't expect severe problems with clouds or rain.

        • -1 Misinformative (Score:4, Informative)

          by 2short ( 466733 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @12:39AM (#13833147)

          Satelite communications work fine through stormclouds. Ditto all manner of ground-based communications passing horizontally trough many times as much storm as these signals will need to pass trough vertically. Water is mediocre (but sufficient) at disrupting a narrow band of frequencies. Engineers who can figure out how to keep a stratospheric communications balloon on station can figure out how to pick a frequency outside this band.
      • At 24km it will be above the weather.

        However, I wonder if they may still be susceptible to Sprites, Elves and Jets [wikipedia.org].

        The figures on the Wikipedia page seem to suggest that 24km would be in the gap above the weather we experience and below where these occur.
      • Storms...At 24 kilometers in the air? Not going to happen. That's in the stratosphere, well above even commerical airline flightpaths. The winds up there are more sedate, though they do exist, especially toward the tropics.

        Sure, the baloons won't be taken out by lightning, but the question is, how will reception be affected? FM radio reception goes to shit every time it rains, and that's broadcast from the same side of the storm as the reciever -- with these baloons, we're talking about transmissions tr
    • Most likely they would operate at a height above most of the storms.
    • it doesn't seem like something you should always rely on, what about storms?

      Storms? What about explosions??? Did these people never hear of the Hindenburg?
    • Yes, and also: when the invaders arrived in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "Footfall", one of the first things they did was eliminate all the sattelites.

      Airships are slightly lower altitude, but will still be targets.

      We should strive to maintain terrestrial methods of communication, even if the airborne methods are much faster.

      FUCK YOU it allows "everyone a fair chance at posting a comment" -- we're all geeks here, tell us "you can't post more than one comment within two minutes so that we can sl

  • need more info, just for curiosity's sake (Score:5, Informative)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <yayagu@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @04:47PM (#13830298) Journal

    Wonder what the public reception (pun intended) and reaction will be to the number of airships necessary to provide complete coverage.

    Also, it's not clear since both the slashdot post (quoting accurately from the article) and the article mention coverage at "..., With each airship being able to support an area of 60 kilometres...". Ignoring the fact that kilometres is a measurement of distance not area, what does this mean? Since the article claims at that coverage they would only need a "handful" or airships to provide complete coverage I'm going to infer:

    • by 60 km, they mean either a radius, or diameter, in which case the coverage of a single aircraft would be either 11,300 sq km, or 2800 sq km respectively. (BTW, they're going to have to come up with a coverage in the United States that can cover square miles!)
    • exactly (or even approximately) how do they quantify a "handful"?

    Regardless, I would still be curious if that many craft in the air would be an eyesore, or something we adapt to. There is anecdotal evidence resistance to these kinds of things can be quite strong even with benefits to the population (case in point -- wind farms). (And there is STILL resistance to and legal activity around where and how cell-towers can be erected.)

    (I guess someone's going to have to fill me in on how large a 12,000 cubic meter balloon appears at 24 kilometers.... let's see, if it were a cube, that would be about 23 meters each side... which is about 65 ft. per side... okay, never mind... smaller than a jet liner at 78,000 ft... sigh)

    • There is anecdotal evidence resistance to these kinds of things can be quite strong even with benefits to the population (case in point -- wind farms).


      You just ask anyone who lives near a wind farm how beneficial they are.

    • Why not use planes instead of blimps? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Alwin Henseler ( 640539 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @05:32PM (#13830704)
      Regardless, I would still be curious if that many craft in the air would be an eyesore, or something we adapt to. There is anecdotal evidence resistance to these kinds of things can be quite strong even with benefits to the population (case in point -- wind farms). (And there is STILL resistance to and legal activity around where and how cell-towers can be erected.)

      You can be pretty sure that a mostly transparent balloon, flying at these altitudes, is as good as invisible to the naked eye. And a tiny dot in the sky is much less an eyesore than a large windfarm just off the coast. Not that I think that's an eyesore, BTW.

      I wonder whether planes aren't more practical than ballons for this purpose. A balloon slowly leaks out gas, so how long it can stay up there is limited by that leakage.

      How long a plane can stay up there, is limited by fuel. Now if you use a solar cell powered plane (NASA built one some time ago), the time it can stay up there is mostly limited by wear and tear of mechanical parts. That might be much longer than a leaking balloon.

      I'm not sure how this balloon is kept in the same place, for a plane that would be easy. And you'll probably need some additional energy to power the communication equipment. A solar-powered plane would already have solar cells for that.

      Looks nice either way. One of the problems with satellite communication is high latency (due to the sheer height of geo-stationary orbit). A 'satellite' in the stratosphere makes that problem go away.
      • There is probably a cost angle to this that make blimps more cost effective.

        I would imagine ( but dont have data to back this up ) that station keeping
        a blimp would be less costly in fuel than flying a heavier than air craft.

        Plus the crashes would be softer. :-)

      • you'll probably need some additional energy to power the communication equipment. A solar-powered plane would already have solar cells for that.

        Recently, AC Propulsion's [acpropulsion.com] SoLong [acpropulsion.com] solar powered aircraft recently proved that a 48 hour flight [freerepublic.com] was possible. And before that, the Helios solar powered aircraft [nasa.gov] that was able to reach 95000 feet under it's own power was enough to convice Sky Tower [skytowerglobal.com] that this was a viable business idea.

        Of course, way back in the 80's there was the SHARP aircraft that was powered by a m

      • Hmm, how about putting flexible solar paneling on the top surface of the balloon?

        And perhaps an air exchanger which can extract helium from the atmosphere (using any excess energy obtain from the solar collectors)?

      • How long a plane can stay up there, is limited by fuel. Now if you use a solar cell powered plane (NASA built one some time ago), the time it can stay up there is mostly limited by wear and tear of mechanical parts. That might be much longer than a leaking balloon.

        The other likely limitation is the battery. It needs to be able to hold enough charge to operate the machine all night, with the worst case senario being mid-winter.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @05:36PM (#13830741)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • RFC 1149? (Score:2, Funny)

      by SoSueMe ( 263478 )
      Latest implementation of RFC 1149 ? [faqs.org]

      Or, should that be, "Aviation Carriers"?
    • They will bring the airships down lower, cover the sides in advertising, and the whole thing will suddenly be a complete non-issue!

    • C'mon, it's simple math! (Score:4, Informative)

      by wurp ( 51446 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @07:02PM (#13831279) Homepage
      I guess someone's going to have to fill me in on how large a 12,000 cubic meter balloon appears at 24 kilometers..

      This is an easy one... your approximation of the sides is OK, but I'll use the volume of a sphere (4/3 * pi * r ^ 3 =~ 4.5 * r^3), so it's about 12000/4.5 =~ 3000, then take the cube root - about 14 meters radius. Now, the visual size of it is a simple proportion. If you want to know how big it will look at 10 meters (across the street), then just figure the proportion from 24 km to 10 m, which is 24000 / 10 = 2400, so at 24 km away it will look like an object 1/2400th its size across the street. 14/2400 =~ 1/170, so it will look like something 1/170th of a meter across the street. A meter is about 40 inches, so 40/170 = less than 1/4 of an inch. Since we were dealing with radius, it's 1/2 an inch in diameter.

      These balloons will look like something 1/2 inch across will look from across the street. They'll be difficult to see at all.

    • Only 65km? On a clear day I can see Pike's Peak, 150km south and only 2.8km higher up.

      The line-of sight range to an airship at 25km altitude is about 565km. LOS range to a location at the earth's surface is determined from Pythagoras' theroem. The earth's circumference is about 40,000km, so the earth's radius Re is about 6370km. At height h, LOS = sqrt((Re+h)^2-Re^2) = sqrt(2*Re*h+h^2). The textbook approximation LOS=sqrt(2*Re*h) is valid for Re>>h. Conclusion: they're probably using a narrow antenna

    • Also, it's not clear since both the slashdot post (quoting accurately from the article) and the article mention coverage at "..., With each airship being able to support an area of 60 kilometres...". Ignoring the fact that kilometres is a measurement of distance not area, what does this mean? Since the article claims at that coverage they would only need a "handful" or airships to provide complete coverage

      It could make sense if it means that the transciever on the airship could communicate up to a maximum

  • I'm hoping... (Score:5, Funny)

    by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @04:49PM (#13830329) Homepage Journal
    I'm hoping that they don't coat the balloons with a flamable doping, so that there's no chance of flaming zeplins of doom from falling out of the skies. It would bring a new meaning to the "Internet being down" though, wouldn't it?

    Oh the Humanity! My wireless quit!

  • Airships??? (Score:2, Funny)

    by AviLazar ( 741826 )
    super-fast internet access via airships

    Did someone find the floating rock from Final Fantasy 1 or are we talking about the Goodyear blimp?

  • But... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rob_squared ( 821479 ) <robNO@SPAMrob-squared.com> on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @04:50PM (#13830338)
    But war ballooning doesn't sound quite right.
  • With each airship being able to support an area of 60 kilometres

    60 kilometers is a distance. 60km^2 is an area.

    Unless we all live in the world of Paper Mario and nobody remembered to tell me

  • Vulnerability (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tiberius_Fel ( 770739 ) <fel.empirereborn@net> on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @04:52PM (#13830354)
    So theoretically, if a country switched to a few of these, they would be a few anti-aircraft missiles away from being without internet access? Seems that centralizing them in the air like that kind of makes them vulnerable to being quickly and easily destroyed...

    • Re:Vulnerability (Score:3, Informative)

      by dreamchaser ( 49529 )
      I am not sure that anyone would care during war if end user wireless access goes. They aren't talking about replacing copper and fibre infrastructure with this. Those will remain.

    • Redundancy (Score:5, Informative)

      by shis-ka-bob ( 595298 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @05:03PM (#13830460)
      If I set up the electric grid so that everyone in town used the same transformer, a single terrorist with a TOW rocket could leave everyone without electricity. We cannot prevent all terrorists from ever getting a TOW rocket. How on Earth can we provide reliable electricity? We have redundancy in the grid.

      I'll bet its easier/faster/cheaper to launch a backup balloon than it is to splice a fibre optic that was cut by a backhoe (the natural preditor of LANS.)

    • Re:Vulnerability (Score:5, Insightful)

      by topham ( 32406 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @05:04PM (#13830471) Homepage


      And when the war was over they would have the infrastructure back up in a few weeks.

      As a primary communications system for emergency services this isn't the way to go.

      As a secondary source of internet access this would rock.
    • As opposed to a few pairs of bolt cutters away from being without internet access? http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/national/2005/07/ 25/telus-050725.html [www.cbc.ca]
    • Missles....or my BB gun.

      Me and my trusty Red Rider BB gun [imdb.com] could do some serious DDoS. Don't test me or I'll shoot your eye out.

    • Re:Vulnerability (Score:5, Funny)

      by Michael Woodhams ( 112247 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @05:40PM (#13830774) Journal
      They're talking about an altitude of 24000 metres (79000 feet.) This would require a serious missile - something launched from a truck or aircraft, not from a shoulder. Wikipaedia says the Stinger can attack aircraft at altitudes between 180m and 3800m. If terrorists are able to drive a truck-based missile launcher into your country, your porn conduit probably isn't going to be high on their list of targets.*
          But yes, if there is a war on and enemy aircraft are overflying your country, you may loose broadband internet, significantly impacting your ability to download recent TV shows.

      * But if the missile is labeled something like "National Committee for the Enforcement of Community Standards", perhaps you should start worrying.

  • Area? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @04:53PM (#13830370) Journal
    With each airship being able to support an area of 60 kilometres, there would only need to be "a handful" to offer complete coverage in the UK, he added.

    60 Kilometers is a distance, not an area. Maybe they meant 60km^2? or a 60km radius? There's a really big difference, watch your units guys.

  • A new first (Score:5, Funny)

    by confused philosopher ( 666299 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @04:54PM (#13830378) Homepage Journal
    Is this the first time that "super-fast", "airships", and "successfully" have been used together in the same sentence?

  • Let's Improve Current Technology (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RUFFyamahaRYDER ( 887557 ) <slashdot@kelsdoma i n .com> on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @04:57PM (#13830405) Homepage
    I don't want my Internet access floating around on some balloon that can get blown, and harmed by the weather. How about we spend money on improving our current wireless grounded technology so we can go through buildings and other things that get in our way instead of trying to float balloons over them.

  • Emergency Internet / Comm Service (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rlp ( 11898 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @04:59PM (#13830434)
    Would be handy for supplying communications for emergency services. For instance, in the aftermath of a hurricane, or earthquake, this could be brought in to connect emergency service providers on the ground using battery or generator powered laptops / handhelds or VOIP phones. One of the problems during the aftermath of Katrina was landlines were down, almost all wireless phones were down (except for one or two spots) and the NOPD emergency comm system had failed.
  • as consumers demand ever higher bandwidth
    The puns that could flow from this topic are too numerous for the mind to fathom without exploding ^_^

  • Hasn't this idea.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by philipmather ( 864521 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @05:06PM (#13830493) Homepage Journal
    Hasn't this idea... been floating around for a while?
    • I see an article like this every year or so - usually it's blimps, some years it's solar-powered lightweight airplanes, but almost always it's a couple of years from completion. The big difference is that this project is from researchers expecting Somebody Else to deploy the system, as opposed to Entrepreneurs who expect to get Funding Real Soon Now.

      But yes, it would really rock - and every couple of years delay means that the potential network speed tends to increase. Somebody else wrote that you could

  • yeah it's faster than my Dial up, faster than my current DSL. But the stories about WiMax refer to 50-100 Mbs. And it should take less investment to add a WiMax transmitter to current cell towers than to invent a way to keep blimps at 24km reliably, without storm clouds providing interference.
    I mean, 11Mbs is one more than the 10 in good old "10 base T", right? I say, not fast enough to bother... blah.

    -- Mr. Curmudgeon...

  • Maybe they'll replace satellite TV. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FooAtWFU ( 699187 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @05:10PM (#13830530) Homepage
    I saw something in the Wall Street Journal about using very-high-altitude airships to replace satellites. If the technology were developed some, they'd be a lot easier to replace than a satellite, and you don't need to worry about NASA (and other space agencies') help putting them up all the way in geosynchronous orbit, so there's a lot more potential for neat stuff on the platform. And you can move another one up there, and then take the original down for upgrades. Less risk from micrometeorites, too.

  • More info on HAPs (Score:3, Informative)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @05:13PM (#13830552) Journal
    Yes, it's a corporate site, but scroll down the site for some good links to follow to learn about HAPs and their use as communications infrastructure.

    http://www.elec.york.ac.uk/comms/haps.html [york.ac.uk]

  • SSID (Score:4, Funny)

    by nm0n ( 720057 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @05:15PM (#13830564)
    SSID = LedZeppelin

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Columbia will use 5 Stratellites [blogspot.com] to provide a wireless broadband network. This seems like the same thing. Nothing new under the sun? Not from this story anyway.
  • Can't get enough of porn even in an airship eh?
  • So, one airship covers a huge area, a large number of users, all expecting 11MBps (or 120, as the article says is planned for).

    Let's see, 1000 people running 11 million ... carry the 4, take the square root ... that's a total of 11Gbps of data. How many people are in an area 60km in radius? If that's over a city, 50-100 thousand, assume 10% penetration, that's 5 to 10 thousand users in just that one small area. Are they planning on carrying a large raft of cache servers aloft with these balloons, or are p


  • In the last eight years I've heard airships proposed for

    1) Carrying large loads over long distances (more energy efficient than planes and capable of carrying large cargo).

    2) Mobile phone networks rather than masts (like this internet one)

    3) "Air cruises"

    4) Global survelliance (over using sats)

    And to be honest a whole raft of other things, it just seems to be one of those things that researchers ALWAYS think is a good idea.

    Getting a PhD 101

    1) Find the problem
    2) Define the Airship solution
  • Don't we get this story every few months? About half the time it's this outfit in York, and the other half it's someone else.

    Fair play to their PR people - they seem to be doing a good job - but surely this is in the "never going to happen" category?
  • Now *that's* what I call a raised floor!

  • It's the British contribution to the space race. (Score:3, Funny)

    by FishandChips ( 695645 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @07:10PM (#13831324) Journal
    It's the British contribution to the space race.

    I don't image the broadband bit will work for very long. As soon as the thing gets to any altitude, a UK space expert who looks like Worzel Gummidge will appear on TV and announce that the experiment has proved a world-beating success and one in the eye for the ambitions of America, China, Russia, etc., to explore the solar system.

    We will be assured that the crew have an ample supply of Eccles cake and liquorice allsorts. Presumably an airship is needed because only something that size can hoist aloft a passenger cabin containing an Aga and a flush lavatory, thus allowing unlimited quantities of tea and toast to be consumed. There is talk of a Nobel Prize for the mission designer.

    At this stage the truth will emerge - having sent the airship aloft a mysterious technical error prevents the controllers from ever getting it down again. The airship will probably last be heard of careering around somewhere over the Indian Ocean, beaming down the Des O'Connor Show and the racing results from Epsom to a baffled audience in Tamil Nadu.
  • This have been brought up several times, by different companies aiming at providing internet access using different sorts of air ships. Throughout the dot com days, several companies provided such wishful thinking and with great press releases.

    Dig through slashdot history and you'll find it.

    Yet no one delivered something main stream which
    can compete with terrestial based alternatives
    either economical nor performance wise.

    Damn I'm getting old.

    Deploying such aerial installation for emergency coverage
    on the ot
  • 802.11 balloons are so two months ago. [groovin.net]

    Just kidding. We had a few problems, but hope to do better next time. I have done the math this time and know what is needed to make it happen.
  • The guys at Sanswire have been at this for a couple of years now with their stratellites ...

    http://www.sanswire.net/ [sanswire.net]

  • I can't be the only one to have pictured various Final Fantasy characters surfing the net while enroute to their next destination in their airships...
  • And consider a much larger floating platform, one on the order of a square kilometer, made up of a carbon fiber grid about ten meters in height. Balloons can be placed at regular intervals, with access to them via the adjoining cells. On the underside, there is a large amount of space in which one can hang MANY antennas and cameras, each individually capable of being repositioned and/or set to different frequencies to avoid interference. Along the topside there is an extensive array of solar cells to kee
  • Broadband via donkeys?

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