Balloon-to-Balloon AdHoc Wireless Network Connectivity: Google Project Loon
This addresses the challenge of providing internet access in remote areas through balloon networks, but appears incremental as it builds on existing adhoc communication protocols with specific graphical method adaptations.
The paper tackles the problem of establishing reliable wireless mesh network connectivity between high-altitude balloons in Google Project Loon, proposing a protocol that uses convex hull methods and content-based multicasting with angular sector division, and evaluates transmission paths based on link failure probability.
Project Loon is a Google initiated research project from the Google X Lab. The project focuses on providing remote internet access and network connectivity. The connectivity is established in vertical and horizontal space; vertical connectivity between Google Access Point (GAP) and the balloons, and between balloons and antennas installed at land; horizontal connectivity is between the balloons. This research focuses on the connectivity between the balloons in a mesh network. The proposal focuses on implementing graphical methods like convex hull with adhoc communication protocols. The proposed protocol includes content-based multicasting using angular sector division rather than grids, along with dynamic core-based mesh protocol defining certain core active nodes and passive nodes forming the convex hull. The transmission (multicasting and broadcasting) between the nodes will be evaluated using the link probability defining the probability of the link between two nodes failing. Based on the link probability and node features, best path between transmitting and receiver nodes will be evaluated.