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Google plans to beam 5G internet from solar drones
- acd 11y agoThe future are super dense networks Lifi, 60GHz, then 5Ghz, then 2.4-1.8GHz because that will give the most bandwidth for the buck. You always want higher frequency first because it can carry more and then fall back to lower frequencies if you are out of coverage of the high freq. Outside developed areas there will be internet by solar drones and lower orbit satellite internet.
- dijit 11y agoLiFi is such a sketchy idea to me, due to how IrDA has been in the past. Maybe somehow I'm the last generation who remembers really shitty remote controls for televisions. :\
- ucaetano 11y agoThe bandwidth doesn't depend on the frequency you're occupying, but on the amount of spectrum available: you "usually" get in the order of 1 bps for every Hz of spectrum available for mobile: a 20Mz chunk of spectrum will give you ~20Mbps, no matter if it is 700MHz or 5 GHz. (Please notice that YMMV, LTE gets several times that, illustrative, bla bla bla, etc.). Higher frequencies have awful penetration and range, that's why today you define who wins in the mobile game by the amount of 700MHz and 800MHz spectrum they own. In other words, lower frequency spectrum is (within certain limits) always better.
- Armisael16 11y agoThat may be true at present, but higher frequency systems do ideally allow for higher data rates. EDIT: No, I'm wrong.
- gsteinb88 11y agoThat's simply false. What is true is that per-band allocations tend to be larger at higher passband frequencies, but the width of the baseband in absolute terms is what determines information capacity. See: The Shannon limit
- ucaetano 11y agoNot really, the bandwidth doesn't depend on the frequency, but on the how much spectrum you have. The frequency impacts in other ways (noise, penetration, etc.) but not in the amount of raw data you can put through a channel.
- rayiner 11y agoCellular network capacity is a function of channel width, modulation, and spatial reuse. Because there are many more low-frequency channels of a given width than high frequency ones, it's much easier to justify very wide channels at higher frequencies. The better propagation of lower frequencies is also a double edged sword. It's much easier to build a very dense cellular network if cell sites far apart can't hear each other (causing co-channel interference). Also, because higher frequencies propagate more directionally, it's also easier to take advantage of spatial reuse techniques.
- LeifCarrotson 11y ago> there are many more low-frequency channels of a given width than high frequency ones, it's much easier to justify very wide channels at higher frequencies. Right conclusion, wrong (mis-stated?) premise. There are more high-frequency channels of a given width than low-frequency ones. 700-800 MHz is a whopping 12.5% change, and it gets you 100 MHz to work with, but 5.725-5.875 is only a 2.5% change and gets you 150 MHz to work with.
- rayiner 11y agoYeah, meant that the other way around.
- ucaetano 11y ago> because higher frequencies propagate more directionally Again, right conclusion but wrong premise. The don't propagate more directionally, but as they have limited penetration and high attenuation, they are more useful for point-to-point with line-of-sight than for broadcast.
- auganov 11y agoAnyone got a resource that explains the relationship between spectrum/frequency/modulation-tech/etc and bandwidth in an understandable way for someone not-so-physics/signal-processing-literate? My [uninformed] intuition tells me that you can have theoretically infinite bandwidth over any spectrum or modulation scheme, but the cost/size/energy-requirement quickly gets prohibitively high because of the "sensitivity" such a device would have to have?
- samcheng 11y agoThat's why they call it "bandwidth" - the width of the spectrum band is what determines the information throughput. Wikipedia might work as a primer. See Nyquist & Shannon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem#Sampling_of_non-baseband_signals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampli... For example, in order to sample the FM radio signals in the frequency range of 100-102 MHz, it is not necessary to sample at 204 MHz (twice the upper frequency), but rather it is sufficient to sample at 4 MHz (twice the width of the frequency interval).
- typon 11y agoWhen I first learned this it blew my mind at it's implications and then obviousness. Shannon was a once-in-a-century genius...in a century of many once-in-a-century geniuses.
- ucaetano 11y agoAlso take a look at spectrum efficiency, which is the "practical implementation" of all this. It really helps to understand how spectrum is a limited public resource. For example, a carrier with 20MHz of spectrum each way and a tower covering 1km2 in 3 sectors could offer at most 60Mbps down over 3G. If you have 6000 customers in that same area (remember that some cities have densities in the 10+k/km2), that means ~10Kbps per customer on average, which is enough for 1.5 GB/month/customer.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- volcrado 11y agoIn the mean time, I am stuck at slow 3G. Are there regulations for the frequencies at which they can transmit their services? Err?
- thescriptkiddie 11y agoIt's very strange that "3G" networks are so slow. HSPA+ supports 22 Mb/s and has better spectral efficiency than LTE, so why do we never see anything approaching that in real life?
- arcanus 11y agoIs 5G even an accepted standard yet?
- gsteinb88 11y agoNot even close. Everyone and their brother has a "vision" for what it will look like, but back in the real world there is nothing solid.
- hammock 11y ago5G is shorthand for "the next gen of mobile tech."
- kuschku 11y ago5G is just a rename of 4G, just like 4G/LTE is a rename of 3.9G/LTE
- dzlobin 11y agoThe more operative keyword here is millimeter wave, since 5g doesn't imply any specifics.
- timrpeterson 11y agoHonest statement: people in big orgs string together stuff in mad lib format to get headlines. Speaking from personal experience, this is the way academics works. From what I can tell there is a disproportionate amount of this amongst the more stately corporations, IBM et al. too. I say this to advise consideration about how much impact will come of such "impressive" projects.
- rhino369 11y agoThis only makes sense if you want to cover large sparse regions that don't already have cell phone operators. Tower range is getting smaller to reuse spectrum.
- jokoon 11y agoI wish I could understand how engineers are able to transmit so much wireless data at those distances, with so many devices at the same time. I guess antenna technologies have improved a lot for the last 10 years, and I still wonder where the subscription cost goes: are there patents for those new types of antennas, are those antennas expensive to build, or does the cost just reflect the amount of antennas installed and the infrastructure built to achieve that wireless bandwidth? Other question is, if you have solar drones, how much upload (from the device to the drone) can you achieve, since batteries are still very much limited?
- valarauca1 11y agoGoogle's Loon Project involves having the balloons float over the weather. So cloud cover isn't the issue. Batteries only have to function at night. Furthermore each drone will in software limit itself to N active connections (just like cell towers do), so you just use that N to calculate max battery draw, then size batteries appropriately.
- jokoon 11y agoI was talking about the battery of smartphones. In general smartphones are good at receiving data, but not so good at sending it because their batteries are very limited.
- madengr 11y agoIt depends on a lot of things; OFDM modulation multi path and fading mitigation, MIMO space-time coding for channel capacity increases, adaptive beam forming, error correction, efficient power amplification, base-band processing. For Google's line of sight application, the adaptive beam forming and power amplification are the main tech drivers.
- zkhalique 11y agoI think we should be working more on improving consumer and enterprise software for local area networks! The global internet does not need the level of hops we are using to transmit data. Things should be done locally first. I don't even want to say "offline first" because the idea of a binary online/offline is again a symptom of thinking that one is either "connected to the internet" or not, with the former implying very comfortable access to the internet to get anything done. We should be encouraging things like IPFS. Back in the day, usegroups and other software did things better than the glorified mainframe approach of today.
- jonstokes 11y agoThis can't get here fast enough. To people who don't really get why they're doing this, or who think it only makes sense in undeveloped regions with no cell towers, I wrote about this here: http://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2016/01/15/wisp-trials-waiting-for-the-balloons/ http://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2016/01/15/wisp-tria... Basically, if you think that in developed areas cell tower density has or should have an inverse correlation with the cost of bandwidth, then you don't live in the real world. There's a reason that there are only a few network operators on most towers, and those guys get away with highway robbery in terms of pricing and quotas. Here is the money graf: "It’s when I began seriously working on the cell tower option that the beauty and inevitability of the balloon idea truly clicked for me. Don’t get me wrong — on its face the Internet balloon idea is still actually nuts, but it’s vastly better than the terrestrial alternatives, which are all terrible because of one fatal problem: any moderately long-range wireless bandwidth solution needs line-of-sight to work, which means you need elevation, and (absent a viable balloon technology) elevation is a function of geography, which makes it eminently exploitable by rent-seekers. This geography-based rent-seeking, by both wireless carriers (via national tower networks) and fixed-line ISPs (via cable, fiber, phone networks, and trunk locations) is the only reason that bandwidth quotas exist in 2016, and it’s what brings the Internet-of-balloons idea down from cloud cuckooland and into the realm of inevitability."
- malchow 11y agoI share your general optimism on sky-based broadband, but I have to admit that I do not follow your argument about rent-seekers. All physical space, even space in the sky, is in limited supply. So why does the rent-seeking nature of cell towers make sky-based broadband inevitable? I can see why sky-based broadband affords a huge competitive advantage, allowing Google to beam 1gbps for $5/mo to the 15 million people who live in Northern California. But why does that make it more likely to come to pass? Are balloon/drone flight plans inevitably easier to file than zoning permits for cell towers? Won't altitude eventually be auctioned off by the FCC? I fear that part of what makes sky-based broadband attractive is the perhaps naïve notion that government will always control the skies in the relatively light-handed way in which it currently controls the skies.
- golergka 11y agoI have been toying with one fantastic idea lately. I know why it would seem like a pure fantasy, and I'm not pretending that it's anything more at the moment, but give it some benefit of a doubt. It's quite simple. Imagine, just for a second, that current trillion evaluations for all the unicorns will turn out to be true in some point in the future. How can it be? What will be going on in this fantastic world? There's only one possible explanation: internet ate everything. The dotcom boom hanged on a very simple, explicit assumption: that internet commerce is viable. That people actually will spend money on the internet. Of course, it lead to a bubble, and that bubble burst, but the assumption itself turned out to be correct. More than that: the valuation that NASDAQ have given to the whole internet industry in the late 90s is a reality know. Of course, individual 90s startups weren't worth that money, but internet industry as a whole certainly is. Even if you judge it just by turnover, without even looking at prospects of growth. So, the first step of internet revolution that was promised by dotcoms already happened. But what about the next step? No one is really talking about it, because it's too fantastic to believe in and nobody wants to be laughed at. But we know what it can theoretically be: the current wave of SV unicorns will _eat_ their respective industries. Imagine it. 90% of taxi industry is Ubers, Lyfts, Getts. 90% of book industry is Amazon. (Wait, that almost already happened). 90% of TV is Netflix and stuff. 90% of payments are Square and Paypal. 90% of hotel industry is AirBnB, Booking.com and something else. Walmart have gone after Blockbuster, everybody orders groceries with online drone delivery. Giant malls stand abandoned, everybody's ordering from AliBaba. And so on. Of course it sounds a little stupid; I drastically simplify it, so we can talk about it without spending time arguing about inconsequential details. And don't forget, all this is more like a fantasy right now. But the point is, in this fantastic world such initiatives by Google, just as free basics by Facebook have nothing to do with charity. Remember, how in the 90s, the only companies that really made money of internet were telecom companies, because the only sure way to monetize an internet user was to charge him for access? (Oh, and porn of course). In contrast, in this fantasy world, the cost of internet access will become insignificant compared to all the money you can get from a person with internet access. And in this fantasy world internet corporations will gladly provide you the access for free. May be they will still charge you a couple of cents for 100Mbps to 1Gbps upgrade, but the 0 (zero) bps to 1Mbps upgrade will make so much money to them that you have no chances of paying for it.
- grandalf 11y agoI expect that neither Google or Facebook will become a next generation ISP: http://vita.mcafee.cc/PDF/feint.pdf http://vita.mcafee.cc/PDF/feint.pdf
- omegaham 11y agoI agree - the entire purpose of this is to threaten other companies into providing better service. Same exact thing with Google Fiber. "If you don't provide service to our expectations, we will step in."
- tcdent 11y agoIf your payload is power generation equipment, and you are able to stay airborne for an indefinite period, is that not perpetual motion? The usual preventative physics apply; friction, efficiency.
- Shish2k 11y agoIt takes energy from the sun, it doesn't generate energy internally
- hartator 11y agoDidn't they already promised the MOON at some point?
- joezydeco 11y agoSo how come millimeter wave networking from Google is a good thing, but the when the ex-Aereo guys announce a similar thing everyone is skeptical? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984755
- dashoffset 11y agoBecause Google?
- MiddleEndian 11y agoMaybe because the aero guys had legal issues with their last product. That being said, as a Bostonian I am excited about this potential internet option.
- DiabloD3 11y agoWhere I live in Maine, this is a third world country when it comes to connectivity. The best you can get is about 25mbps when sitting right under our only cell phone tower in town, it is about 0.5mbps when I can get a signal at my house. My wired home Internet? 15/1 ADSL2. We have cable, they offer speeds up to 30/5 or so, but they force you to bundle it with cable TV to get speeds that high, and I don't want cable TV in my house, nor do I want to pay >$100 for internet only twice as fast; plus, during peak hours, the network falls apart, our local ADSL2 network doesn't. I've written to Google, trying to get them to deploy Google Fiber in Maine, since we need it badly: we don't have a monopoly, we just don't have anything recognizable as the Internet, not the way the rest of the US gets it. Hopefully, they start deploying this in my area sometime in the next few years.
- zurn 11y agoIsn't millimeter just one of a zillion ideas that are being lobbied for 5G?
- rodionos 11y agoAnd the drones are going to stream pictures of me to google servers while hovering over my head 24x7. Those pictures will be analyzed, A/B tested and ad brokered to friendly ad-triggered on-demand services. Wall-e, red is the new blue.
- melted 11y agoSo how about them balloons tho? PR train running out of steam already? Starting a new one? Pay no attention to ad revenue behind the curtain.
- hackercomplex 11y agoMaybe this has already been asked, but the part that I struggle to understand is what about TX ? I mean is a smartphone going to have enough wattage to beam a message back to this drone ? If not then what's the plan for solving that 1/2 of the equation.
- agumonkey 11y agoRandom question: Anyone in rural areas with mesh networks ?
- agumonkey 11y agopigeon + flashmedia > bad broadband http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm