How Project Loon by Google Operates

It's often believed that most people are online nowadays, but this is only the case in certain areas of society. As of late 2015, approximately 4 billion people still lack internet access. Many reside in regions where the necessary infrastructure hasn't yet reached or is either insufficient or unaffordable.

Google, known for its array of high-tech projects, is working on several initiatives to provide high-speed internet to the masses. One such initiative, Google Fiber, aims to offer Gigabit service — much faster than typical connection speeds — using fiber optics. The project currently has pilot programs in various U.S. locations. Additionally, Google has another project focused on bringing basic high-speed internet to areas that lack coverage, using a more low-tech solution: balloons!

This initiative is called Project Loon, a name inspired both by its use of balloons and the somewhat eccentric nature of the concept. Google's vision is to establish wireless networks through technology-laden balloons floating high in the stratosphere, well above the clouds. These balloons interact with each other as well as with ground-based infrastructure and mobile devices, enabling internet access for people on the ground.

Project Loon originated from Google X labs, the same team behind other groundbreaking ideas like self-driving cars, Google Glass, and smart contact lenses. Although Project Loon might sound unconventional, it has already shown promising and successful test results.

Google Loon Balloons

Project Loon's balloons aren't your average party balloons, which wouldn't survive the harsh conditions of high altitudes. They're specifically designed to endure extreme atmospheric factors like pressure variations, high winds, UV exposure, and freezing temperatures. These high-tech balloons stay afloat much longer than any traditional models. They’ve even been given bird-themed names like Falcon, Ibis, Grackle, and most recently, NightHawk.

The balloons are crafted from polyethylene plastic, about the same thickness as a sandwich bag. Once inflated, each balloon's 'envelope' spans around 50 feet wide by 40 feet high (15 meters by 12 meters), with a surface area of 5,381 feet (500 square meters). Their sheer size requires assembly in massive hangars, such as the one at Moffett Federal Airfield in California, which is rented by Google.

The balloons are designed with two chambers—one inside the other. The inner chamber is filled with air, while the outer one contains helium. Equipped with valves and a fan at the bottom, the system allows air to be added or removed. By adding air to the inner chamber, the balloon's mass increases and it descends, while releasing air causes it to rise.

Many of the early balloons in the project either burst or didn't remain airborne for long. The team worked diligently to analyze the failures and make necessary improvements. Google brought in experts from various fields like ballooning, aerospace, and textiles to understand the issues, and also hired former military personnel to retrieve balloons that had fallen in hard-to-reach areas.

Some tests have been conducted in extreme conditions similar to those the balloons might encounter in the atmosphere. On one occasion, temperatures unexpectedly dropped below freezing in South Dakota, a location where the balloons were being manufactured. Later tests took place at the McKinley Climatic Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, where the balloons were exposed to severe weather like high winds and freezing temperatures in a controlled setting.

The majority of failures were traced to tiny, hard-to-detect leaks. Even the smallest pinhole could significantly reduce the balloon's time in the air. In response, the team reinforced the seams and adopted new protocols for handling the balloons, such as requiring team members to walk on them while wearing very soft fuzzy socks.

In addition to enhancing the project's success, Google's work has led to advancements in the ballooning industry. Thanks to design improvements, the balloons now stay afloat for around 100 days. One balloon even set a record by staying in the air for 187 days and completing nine full laps around the planet [source: Raven Aerostar]. These unprecedented flight times were previously thought to be impossible by some experts.

The Loon team has made significant improvements to the balloon deployment process since the project's inception. Initially, a crew had to lay out the balloons on tarps, unwrap, and partially inflate them before launching. Launches were only possible in winds of 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) per hour or less. However, Google has now developed the Autolauncher (internally called the Bird House), a 50-foot (15.2-meter) tall portable hangar with an automated crane to stretch and fill the balloons. This allows launches in winds up to 15 miles (24 kilometers) per hour, reducing the required workforce from 14 people and 45 minutes to just 4 people and 15 minutes. These advancements make sustaining a network of balloons much more practical [sources: Metz, Stone].

Google Loon Electronic Equipment

Google isn't just launching balloons; each balloon is equipped with a metallic box of electronic gear, suspended by a cord. The box is powered by solar panels attached to the balloon.

Each solar panel is made up of monocrystalline solar cells encased in plastic laminate and held within an aluminum frame measuring roughly 5 feet by 5 feet (1.5 meters by 1.5 meters). Two panels are positioned at sharp angles to capture as much sunlight as possible while the balloon spins. These panels generate about 100 watts of power during a few hours of full daylight, storing the energy in batteries to keep the equipment running during nighttime.

The electronic payload on each balloon includes various devices to manage operations. These devices include computing equipment for overall control, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that store solar energy, GPS units for tracking the balloons' locations, numerous sensors to monitor atmospheric conditions, and radio equipment that allows communication both with other balloons and with ground-based networks. The radio systems comprise an eNodeB LTE base station for broad coverage, a high-speed directional link, and a backup radio system.

Google states that each balloon's coverage extends over approximately 25 miles (40 kilometers) in diameter on the ground, potentially allowing hundreds of users to connect simultaneously. The Loon team has managed to increase data transmission speeds by tenfold since the project's inception [source: Google]. They anticipate coverage will match the typical speeds found in LTE 4G networks. Project Loon leader Mike Cassidy has claimed that the balloon networks could cover up to 5,000 square kilometers (1,931 square miles) on Earth, offering speeds of 15 megabits per second on mobile phones and 40 megabits per second on MiFi devices [source: Verge].

Google Loon at Work

Earth's first atmospheric layer, the troposphere, is where we live and where most weather events occur. Above it lies the stratosphere, where the Loon balloons operate. The stratosphere begins at an altitude of between 4 and 12 miles (6 to 20 kilometers) above the Earth's surface, varying with latitude. The upper boundary of the stratosphere is around 31 miles (50 kilometers) high. The Loon balloons will be positioned between 11 and 17 miles (18 and 27 kilometers) above Earth—approximately twice the altitude of commercial air traffic routes.

The stratosphere is a region with minimal water vapor, few clouds, and little to no weather activity. The temperature gradient varies from cold at lower altitudes to hot at higher ones, which prevents the gases from rising. This results in relatively stable atmospheric layers at different heights. Within these layers, winds blow predictably in varying directions and speeds.

Google has been leveraging historical wind data and current forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop algorithms capable of predicting wind patterns for balloon navigation. The balloons can be controlled by adjusting the ratio of helium to air, allowing them to ascend or descend to specific altitudes within the stratosphere where the wind is moving in the required direction. This means the balloons are both solar and wind-powered.

Google has created an operations platform known as Mission Control to continuously track, monitor, and guide the balloons. This system also sends alerts to nearby air traffic controllers when balloons are ascending or descending. Over time, their navigation software has been improved, going from sending updates just once daily to every 15 minutes, with the ability to recalibrate flight paths every minute. The Loon team has enhanced their precision in directing the balloons to specific areas, improving accuracy from several hundred meters to a few hundred kilometers. Although much of the navigation is automated to manage thousands of balloons, operators still monitor the system and can manually intervene if necessary.

Google has developed a method to safely bring the balloons back down to Earth by releasing gas from the envelope. If necessary, gas can be vented automatically if a balloon is at risk of bursting, and a parachute will deploy if the balloon descends too quickly. Google aims to retrieve the balloons and their equipment whenever possible to reuse or recycle their components.

The LTE equipment attached to the balloons will operate on the existing cellular frequencies used by phone networks, enabling direct communication with cell phones and ground-based towers, thus eliminating the need for additional ground antennas. Google will collaborate with local mobile carriers, allowing users to connect through LTE-enabled devices. To access the network, users will need to use special Loon SIM cards.

Project Loon So Far

The preliminary testing, known as the Icarus tests, started in August 2011. Project leader Rich DeVaul and his team launched four latex balloons carrying Linux-based computing equipment and a WiFi router from California's San Luis Reservoir. They followed the balloons in a vehicle equipped with antennas, a WiFi card, and a spectrum analyzer to evaluate the signal. This series of tests led to successfully transferring a signal from one balloon to another, providing an internet connection in the car. The initial equipment was reportedly housed in a styrofoam cooler during some of the early trials.

In 2012, the project’s team name changed to Daedalus, named after Icarus’s father. DeVaul shifted to the role of Chief Technical Architect to focus on the technical side, and Mike Cassidy took over as project leader. The team expanded by hiring aerospace engineers, network engineers, mapping experts, energy specialists, at least one balloonist, military veterans, and textile professionals (including seamstresses) to aid in the design, testing, and construction of the balloons. Later that year, they began collaborating with Raven Aerostar, a company that manufactures balloons for NASA, to refine their designs.

In an effort to improve the likelihood of recovering test equipment, the words "harmless science experiment" were printed on the gear along with a contact number offering a reward (but no mention of Google, as the project was still confidential at the time). In October 2012, one of the test balloons seemingly sparked reports of a UFO sighting in Kentucky and eventually drifted to Canada, where it was lost.

The initial official test flights took place in June 2013, with thirty balloons launched from Christchurch, New Zealand. These balloons reached an altitude of about 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) and each carried around 22 pounds of equipment. The equipment communicated wirelessly with specially designed, large ground-based antennas. Among the 50 testers were the Nimmo and MacKenzie families, who became some of the first people to access the Internet via a balloon network. Their connection speeds were 3G.

Subsequent tests have taken place in various locations including California's Central Valley, Australia, Chile, and Brazil. In June 2014, Linoca Gayoso Castelo Branco, a school in Brazil, became the first to connect to the Internet using Project Loon’s LTE-equipped balloons and a rooftop antenna. [sources: Levy, Simonite]. Google's next goal is to deploy hundreds of balloons in a ring around the Earth to offer continuous service, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere. The company faces challenges with obtaining overflight permissions, so it’s mostly testing in regions where these permissions are less problematic [source: Verge].

In July 2015, it was revealed that Google was partnering with Sri Lanka to offer nationwide Internet access to the country, which spans 25,000 square miles (64,750 square kilometers) and is home to around 22 million people—many of whom lack internet access. The project aimed for deployment by early 2016 [sources: Gershgorn, Lavars, Yahoo].

In September 2015, a Loon balloon made an unexpected landing, crashing into a palm tree in a residential yard in a Los Angeles suburb, just a short distance from its planned landing zone. Fortunately, there were no injuries from this minor incident [source: Collman].

Potential Benefits of Google Loon

There are many places where Internet service is lacking, of poor quality, or too expensive for people to afford. When Project Loon started in 2011, the International Telecommunication Union reported 2.2 billion people were online. By 2015, that number grew to about 3.2 billion [sources: Davidson, ITU]. Despite this increase, roughly 4 billion people still lack Internet access.

Even people with Internet access often struggle with poor or inconsistent broadband speeds. Connectivity via balloons could solve these issues in hard-to-reach areas like mountains, or regions where Internet infrastructure is limited. Balloon-based networks could be deployed more quickly and affordably in remote areas or developing countries compared to the high costs of laying wires, building cell towers, or using pricey satellites. These balloons could also serve as a rapid-response solution during emergencies, restoring Internet access after natural disasters damage infrastructure.

Mobile network providers have shown interest in leasing access to the Project Loon network. This could help them expand their customer base and improve service speeds in existing coverage areas. While it won't be free, there’s potential for some cost savings to be passed on to consumers through lower prices. Google has already teamed up with Vodafone in New Zealand, Telstra in Australia, and Vivo and Telebras in Brazil for testing.

Project Loon has the potential to be a major societal asset, especially in a time when staying connected to the world brings significant benefits. Bringing global connectivity to everyone would also provide advantages for Google, which generates substantial revenue from online ads and services. Additionally, the company would earn payments for providing access to the Loon network.

In 2014, Google acquired Titan Aerospace, a solar-powered, high-altitude drone company (which was reportedly taken from under Facebook's nose) to assist with a variety of initiatives, including Project Loon and mapping. Alongside this, they purchased Skybox Imaging, a satellite company, and made investments in SpaceX, which is seeking approval to launch thousands of small satellites into low Earth orbit in order to deliver high-speed Internet to the globe.

Google isn't the only tech giant working to bring Internet access to people through the skies. Facebook launched its Connectivity Lab with the goal of offering affordable Internet to more people around the world using technologies like drones and satellites. In 2014, they acquired Ascenta, a solar-powered, high-altitude drone company, and recruited experts from organizations like NASA.

Having Internet access enables people to tap into a wide array of resources the World Wide Web has to offer, from communication to education to business prospects. Countless businesses can access crucial data and new materials and product sources. Those in areas with limited or no healthcare options could receive virtual medical consultations. Educators and students can immediately access supplemental classroom materials, while those in remote areas without schools can read textbooks or enroll in online courses. Future scientists and inventors can discover ideas, resources, and even potential collaborators.

Expanding Internet access can significantly improve the economy of a region. As Mike Cassidy, the project lead for Google Loon, explains, boosting a country's Internet penetration by 10 percent results in approximately a 1.4 percent annual increase in GDP [source: Valve].

Google plans to have Project Loon up and running for commercial service by the end of 2016.