Balloons in the Sky: Unveiling the Characteristics and Trade-Offs of the Google Loon Service
Autor: | Pablo Serrano, Marco Gramaglia, Francesco Mancini, Luca Chiaraviglio, Giuseppe Bianchi |
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Přispěvatelé: | Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España) |
Rok vydání: | 2023 |
Předmět: |
Sea surface
Informática Internet Mobile computing Settore ING-INF/03 Telecomunicaciones Loon service Computer Networks and Communications UAV Wireless communication Poles and towers Digital divide HAPs Long Term Evolution High Altitude Platform Station Electrical and Electronic Engineering Companies Software Unmanned Aerial Vehicles |
Zdroj: | IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. 22:3165-3178 |
ISSN: | 2161-9875 1536-1233 |
DOI: | 10.1109/tmc.2021.3135976 |
Popis: | The Google's Loon[TM] initiative aims at covering rural or underdeveloped areas via fleets of high-altitude balloons supporting LTE connectivity. But how effective and stable can be the coverage provided by a network deployed via propulsion-free balloons, floating in the sky, and only loosely controllable through altitude variations? To provide some insights on the relevant performance and trade-offs, in this paper we gather real-world data from publicly available flight tracking services, and we analyze coverage and service stability in three past deployment scenarios. Besides employing a variety of metrics related to spatial and temporal coverage, we also assess service continuity, by also leveraging recently proposed “meaningful availability” metrics. While our analyses show that balloons are certainly a cost-effective way to provide a better-than-nothing and delay-tolerant service, there is yet no empirical evidence that an increase in the number of overlapping balloons may be rewarded with a substantial performance increase - in other words, we suspect that guaranteeing coverage and service stability levels comparable to that of a terrestrial cellular network is a challenging goal. Publicado |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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