Google's project loon Or balloon are helium-filled balloons floating in the stratosphere which are connecting the world's remote places like Kenya by providing 4g internet services to the people in the remote places.
In this modern world, high-speed internet access is highly essential in today's economic and cultural life.Can you imagine not having internet connectivity for one day or I can say for 2 to 3 hours?
You will feel like you are isolated from the entire world and not able to get various info from the digital world.
Now think about the people living in rural areas who are isolated from the Internet facility.
According to 2019 data, globally about 72 per cent of households in urban areas has access to the Internet at home, almost twice as much as in rural areas (around 38 per cent).
This shows the huge gap in internet connectivity between urban and rural areas.
So here comes the 4g internet project loon technology, which can provide internet facilities to remote areas where ground towers were construction was not possible.
Building the balloon that can work in harsh atmospheric conditions
About 60 to 70 first balloons they made burst in the upper atmosphere after launching. They had to think about what mistakes they are doing? What are the parameters that are affecting the balloon at a high altitude?
They are continuously launching the balloon and learning what are improvements can be done.
It's the kinda iterations you are doing continuously until you get the desired results.
Finally, they launch multiple balloons with a setup like a combination of cell phone tower and ballon.
Balloons were launched in a wide area and they move in the atmosphere.
So when you are standing somewhere on the ground with your phone. Your phone will connect to one of the balloons which were passing over you. When this balloon is gone another balloon came into that position. So your phone's connection will not disconnect.
It was the same as you are driving in a car and so your phone is connected to one of the cell phone towers nearest to you. When you go beyond the range of cell phone towers your phone will connect to another tower located in that new location.
Balloons communicate with each other via optical communications or they can connect through radio communication in ground cell towers. And they form a network of floating towers that provides better internet connectivity in remote areas.
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Navigating stratospheric balloons with reinforcement learning
These balloons float in the stratosphere.
The stratosphere is the second layer of the atmosphere as we go up and up. Wind in the stratosphere are layered, they were of different speeds and flow in different directions.
By understanding the wind speed and direction, they made a predictive model, from which they can navigate the balloons to the required path. But for navigating we have to change the altitude of the balloon so that it can reach the other layers of the stratosphere having different wind speeds and directions.
Now the question is how will your balloon remain in a particular range of altitude?
And how can we change the altitude of the balloons?
This floating balloon consists of two balloons one inside another. In one balloon it has helium-filled in it and another one has oxygen. So what helium does it lift the balloon and if we want to decrease the altitude we add more air to the balloon having air, and due to the mass of the balloon increases and its altitude decreases.
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