With technology from Google’s balloon internet Loon: Aalyria promises a new type of network

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with technology from googles balloon internet loon aalyria promises a.png
with technology from googles balloon internet loon aalyria promises a.png

Loon and his internet connection via stratospheric balloons are history, but the work should not have been in vain. A new company builds on it.

 

A year and a half after the end of Loon, the project for an Internet connection via stratospheric balloons by Google mother Alphabet, there is apparently a future for the technology developed for this. According to CNBC, a newly founded company called Aalyria has received technology, patents, office space and other assets in order to develop a new technology for Internet access in hard-to-reach places – but the stratosphere balloons remain history. Instead, Aalyria wants to use lasers and a special software platform to bring broadband speeds to devices on land, sea, air and space.

 

Aalyria relies on two basic techniques that the company calls “spacetime” and “tightbeam”. According to the company, this involves a special laser technology with which data is to be transmitted through the atmosphere instead of fiber optic cables (“tightbeam”) and software that is intended to ensure that interference is prevented. This should allow data to be transmitted “intact” through the air to locations where there is no network infrastructure, regardless of the weather. The software should recognize in advance when difficulties arise and redirect the data streams accordingly. The technology builds on experience gained with the Loon balloons, which were supposed to communicate with each other via laser.

Internet connections via above-ground lasers are not a new idea, and with Taara, another successor to the Loon project is already working on it. Reliability is limited by various environmental factors, including fog, haze and animal interruptions. Aalyria wants that solved and promises to be able to send enough traffic to airplanes to be able to connect every seat with a 1 gigabit per second internet connection, writes Bloomberg. It should be possible to send 1.6 terabits per second over hundreds of kilometers. The first tests would have proven that. The US military also seems to believe that, according to CNBC, they have already signed a contract that will give Aalyria $ 8.7 million. Alphabet holds a minority stake in the company.

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Google launched the first test balloons for Loon in 2013. Long rows of stratospheric balloons were planned, which would be driven around the earth by stratospheric winds at an altitude of 20 kilometers and should act like cell phone towers. They should draw their energy from solar modules and be manoeuvrable. They should communicate with each other and thus form a network in the upper atmosphere. Users should be able to connect to the balloons, which would then in turn connect to the internet. Above all, people in remote regions of the world should be given the opportunity to go online. Alphabet closed the company in January 2021.