While drones were mostly used by the military and navy, they
have now become very popular among civilians and also as a means of delivering
packages. Each company comes with something new and more high-tech than the others
and the competition is at a very high level.
What is Google's Project SkyBender?
The technology company is currently developing the program,
codenamed Project SkyBender, to utilize solar-powered drones equipped with millimeter-wave radio
transmitters that could send out next-generation 5G wireless Internet signals.
So why drones? Why not bounce such signals off of cell
towers? It has to do with the way 5G works, by way of millimeter wave radio
transmissions. Theoretically, millimeter wave frequencies (30 to 300 gigahertz)
can transmit data up to 40 times faster than current 4G LTE wireless tech — but
the shorter breaks in 5G waves, while allowing for an increase of data carry do
shorten the range of transmission, can be scattered by natural atmospheric
activity and make it harder to push through structures. Cell towers just won’t
cut it with 5G.
“The huge advantage
of millimetre wave is access to new spectrum because the existing cellphone
spectrum is overcrowded. It’s packed and there’s nowhere else to go,” says
Jacques Rudell, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of
Washington in Seattle and specialist in this technology.
What
is Millimeter wave?
Millimeter waves occupy the frequency spectrum from 30 GHz
to 300 GHz. They’re found in the spectrum between microwaves (1 GHz to 30 GHz)
and infrared (IR) waves, which is sometimes known as extremely high frequency
(EHF). The wavelength (λ) is in the 1-mm to 10-mm range. At one time this part
of the spectrum was essentially unused simply because few if any electronic
components could generate or receive millimeter waves.
All that has changed in the past decade or so. Millimeter
waves are now practical and affordable, and they’re finding all sorts of new
uses. Best of all, they take the pressure off the lower frequencies and truly
expand wireless communications into the outer limits of radio technology If we go any higher in frequency, we will be using light.
Millimetre length electromagnetic
waves were first investigated in the 1890s by pioneering Indian scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose.
However, millimetre wave transmissions have a much shorter
range than mobile phone signals. A broadcast at 28GHz, the frequency Google is
testing at Spaceport America, would fade out in around a tenth the distance of
a 4G phone signal. To get millimetre wave working from a high-flying drone, Google needs to experiment
with focused transmissions from a so-called phased array. “This is very
difficult, very complex and burns a lot of power,” Rudell says.
SkyBender where tested?
The SkyBender system is
being tested with an “optionally
piloted” aircraft called Centaur as well as solar-powered drones made by
Google Titan, a division formed when Google acquired New Mexico startup Titan
Aerospace in 2014. Titan built high-altitude solar-powered drones with
wingspans of up to 50 meters.
Google spent several
months last summer building two communication installations on concrete pads at
Spaceport America. Project SkyBender is part of the little-known Google Access
team, which also includes Project
Loon, a plan to deliver wireless internet using unpowered balloons floating
through the stratosphere.
One of the millimetre
wave transceivers was located near Spaceport America’s Spaceport Operations
Centre (SOC), and the other four miles away at the Vertical Launch Area (VLA),
although Google’s plans did not involve any rockets. Google also established a
repeater tower and numerous other sites around the Spaceport, presumably to
test millimetre wave reception.
Both installations have
cabinets full of computer servers and other electronics, while the pad at the
SOC required a concrete base to support a dish antenna nearly eight feet
across, according to a separate filing with the Federal Communications
Commissions (FCC).
Google is not the first
organization to work with drones and millimetre wave technology. In 2014,
Darpa, the research arm of the US military, announced a program called Mobile Hotspots to make
a fleet of drones that could provide one gigabit per second communications for
troops operating in remote areas.
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