Bringing internet to remote regions by sending internet-enabled balloons into stratosphere surely sounds like a wild idea, but it's going to turn into a reality for the residents of Sri Lanka. The government of the island nation has quite recently reported an association with Google that will deploy affordable, high-speed web access to every inch of the nation using Google's Project Loon.

Google's Project Loon Balloon

What is Project Loon?

Project Loon is a network of balloons traveling on the edge of space, designed to connect people in rural and remote areas, help fill coverage gaps, and bring people back online after disasters.

Google's vision is a system of balloons gliding in the stratosphere at around 20 km over the Earth's surface. The balloons are furnished with solar panels; carry a box of electronics and communication gears that provide LTE internet connectivity to an area of around 40Km in diameter.

The Technology

Balloons of Project Loon skim in stratosphere, above cloud cover twice as high as airplanes fly. In Stratosphere, there are numerous layers of wind, and every layer changes its course and pace. The Loon balloons go where they're required by rising or dropping into a layer of wind blowing in the desired course of travel. By collaborating with the information transfer organizations to share cellular range, the project has empowered individuals to join the balloon system specifically from their telephones/mobiles and other LTE-empowered gadgets. The signal is then sent over the balloon network and back down to the World Wide Web(WWW) on Earth.

Pictorial elaboration describing the driving strategy for Google Loons in stratosphere

Google began the pilot run with the technology in 2013 in New Zealand where about 30 balloons were launched and 50 local users in the rural areas tested connections to the aerial network using special antennas. On 28 July 2015, Google signed an agreement with officials of Sri Lanka, to launch the technology on a mass scale. Sri Lanka will be the first country in the world to get full coverage of 3G internet, using this technology. As a result Google Loon balloons will cover every village in Sri Lanka from the northernmost to the southernmost points on the island.

The technology designed in the Project Loon could allow countries to avoid using expensive fibre cable that would have to be installed underground to allow users to connect to the Internet. Google feels this will greatly increase Internet usage in developing countries in regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia that can't afford to lay underground fibre cable.

By: Rishu Chhabra - Assistant Professor, Shubham Mehta & Shubham Sharma-Students Chitkara University Punjab

Refrences
1. http://news.discovery.com
2. http://economynext.com
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Loon