Skip to main content

HAPSMobile and Loon Deliver 4G from Stratosphere

Last year, I wrote about how HAPSMobile is bringing connectivity from the sky for underserved, unserved areas as well as emergencies. Earlier this year we saw HAPSMobile and Loon Partner for Stratosphere-Based LTE Communications Solution. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that HAPSMobile and Loon have announced "First in the World to Deliver LTE Connectivity from a Fixed-Wing Autonomous Aircraft in the Stratosphere"


Selected extract of the press release as follows: 

SoftBank Corp.’s HAPSMobile Inc. (“HAPSMobile”) and Alphabet’s Loon LLC (“Loon”) today announced they successfully tested their jointly developed communications payload in the stratosphere on HAPSMobile’s “Sunglider,” a solar-powered unmanned aircraft system (UAS). Taking place during Sunglider’s first stratospheric test flight at Spaceport America (SpA) in New Mexico on September 21 MT, the test marked the world’s first successful delivery of LTE connectivity from a fixed-wing High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) autonomous aircraft in the stratosphere.

The stratosphere-ready payload used in the test flight was a first-of-its-kind for a fixed-wing, autonomous aircraft-based HAPS to deliver LTE connectivity. Using MIMO technology, the payload enabled LTE connectivity to be delivered continuously for approximately 15 hours during Sunglider’s test flight. The payload performed as planned in the demanding conditions of the stratosphere, where wind speeds reached greater than 58 knots (approximately 30 meters per second) and temperatures were as low as -73 degrees Celsius.

During the test, the communications payload enabled a video call between Loon members and AeroVironment, Inc. (“AeroVironment”) team members with smartphones at SpA and HAPSMobile team members in Tokyo. The test system was composed of a service link from Sunglider using the 700MHz spectrum band (LTE Band28) and a feeder link between the aircraft and a ground gateway using millimeter wave spectrum*. Since the radio waves transmitted and received by Sunglider operate on the same frequencies as existing smartphones and devices, Loon and AeroVironment members in SpA were able to use regular smartphones to participate in the video call. During the test flight, smooth operations and connection speeds enabled high-definition, low-latency video calls.

* The service link used a 5MHz band of the 700MHz spectrum band for this test. In addition to an outdoor environment, the video call test was successful indoors.


Vint Cerf, recognized as one of the “Fathers of the Internet” and VP and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google, LLC, and Jun Murai—known as the “Father of the Internet in Japan” and Professor at Keio University’s Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, and HAPSMobile External Director—also joined the video call and discussed HAPS’ significance for the future of the Internet.

During the test flight, HAPSMobile also conducted basic measurements of stratosphere-to-ground radio wave propagation data that will be used toward future contributions to the ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) with a view to international standardization. With the valuable data and learnings that the teams collected during this test, HAPSMobile and Loon will be collectively working with ITU, 3GPP, regulators and telcos to further the already in progress work on HAPS. The test also provided insight into how HAPS could be used in disasters and alongside other lifesaving technologies.


In a recent Mobile World Live webinar, HAPSMobile laid out their roadmap which includes commercialization in 2023. This test flight is just the first step towards that. 

HAPSMobile & Loon are not the only one attempting to do the transmission of 4G/5G from space. Earlier this year, Rakuten and Vodafone have become the lead investors in AST & Science's SpaceMobile which aims to do the same.

Finally, here is a movie produced by HAPSMobile to explain their concept

Related post from HAPSMobile on Mobile World Live here.

Related Posts:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Laser Inter-Satellite Links (LISLs) in a Starlink Constellation

When we first talked about Starlink back in 2019 , we saw in the video that the concept involved laser communication to communicate between the satellites. While the initially launched satellites did not have the laser communication mechanism built in, it looks like they are being added to the newer ones.  A report from Fast Company in late 2021 said: One of the next big upgrades in telecom will involve satellites firing lasers at each other—to beam data, not blow stuff up. The upside of replacing traditional radio-frequency communication with lasers, that encode data as pulses of light, can be much like that of deploying fiber-optic cable for terrestrial broadband: much faster speeds and much lower latency. “Laser links in orbit can reduce long-distance latency by as much as 50%, due to higher speed of light in vacuum & shorter path than undersea fiber,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted in July about the upgrade now beginning for that firm’s Starlink satellite constellation. The

IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability (UHR), a.k.a. Wi-Fi 8

Back in 2020 we looked at the introductory post of Wi-Fi 7 which was followed up by a more detailed post in Feb 2022. We are now following on with an introductory post on the next generation Wi-Fi.  A new paper on arXiv explores the journey towards IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability (UHR), the amendment that will form the basis of Wi-Fi 8. Quoting selected items from the paper  below: After providing an overview of the nearly completed Wi-Fi 7 standard, we present new use cases calling for further Wi-Fi evolution. We also outline current standardization, certification, and spectrum allocation activities, sharing updates from the newly formed UHR Study Group. We then introduce the disruptive new features envisioned for Wi-Fi 8 and discuss the associated research challenges. Among those, we focus on access point coordination and demonstrate that it could build upon 802.11be multi-link operation to make Ultra High Reliability a reality in Wi-Fi 8. The IEEE 802.11bn UHR: Whose Study Gro

CSI-RS vs SRS Beamforming

In an issue of Signals Flash by Signals Research Group (SRG), they talked about 2 different types of MIMO. Quoting from their journal, "CSI-RS versus SRS. Those operators that have tested or made token use of MU-MIMO leverage a flavor of MU-MIMO that is based on CSI-RS. The MU-MIMO network we tested was based on SRS, which makes it far more likely to observe sixteen spatial layers (versus eight)." I reached out to Emil Björnson, Visiting Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Associate Professor at Linköping University to see if he has explained this in any of his videos. Here is what he said: " I'm not talking about 3GPP terminology in any of my videos. But you can listen to the slides that starts around 12:40 in this video (embedded below) . If you are looking for CSI-RS vs SRS based MU-MIMO, then jump to around 12:40 in this video where you can see CSI-RS being referred to as "grid of beams" and SRS is similar to the other option, which is t