TECH

Google uses helium balloons to provide internet in Kenya
The Loon project, which has been in development since 2011 by Alphabet, a Google-owned company, consists of launching air balloons with antennas in the stratosphere, with the aim of spreading the internet signal. The technology will be used to provide online services in central areas of Kenya where coverage is very difficult to achieve due to the difficulty of building antennas in certain aggressive terrain or the low population density of some regions.The Loon will be adopted by telecommunications company Telkom Kenya, which instead of building infrastructures for ground networks and antenna towers for long kilometers, the signal will be transmitted through the air, through the helium balloons 18 km above the planet . The company explains that each balloon can provide internet coverage to about 3,200 square kilometers, and remains floating for months. Google thus presents an unconventional form of LTE 4G signal delivery, which it hopes to negotiate with other carriers.Although on paper it may seem like an easy-to-implement solution, in practice it is a challenge to get the system up and running. This is because the balloons have no propulsion system, being controlled by the force of the wind. The challenge is to identify the wind currents at different altitudes so that the balloon can pick up the right lift to its destination. The Loon navigation system collects government information, in addition to what it records during its testing, and the device is powered by machine learning to turn the air currents into a kind of map. Alphabet has already tested motorized balloons, which can be used in the future.
During the test years, the engineers were able to develop a system to launch a balloon in half an hour. A scanner was also built capable of detecting microscopic defects in its material.


Sapo