In its mission to find ways to provide internet connectivity to the more than 4 billion people who are not yet online, Facebook have ann...
In its mission to find ways to provide internet connectivity to the more than 4 billion people who are not yet online, Facebook have announced milestone in the development of a Solar powered UAV that can provide internet connectivity to remote places using lasers and radio frequency technology.
A full-scale version of Aquila — the high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft designed by Facebook's aerospace team in the UK — is now complete and ready for flight testing.
Aquila has the wingspan of a 737 but weighs hundreds of times less, thanks to its unique design and carbon-fiber frame. When deployed, it will be able to circle a remote region for up to 90 days, beaming connectivity down to people from an altitude of 60,000 to 90,000 feet.
Aquila is solar powered, and when launched, it will create a 50-km communications radius for up to 90 days, beaming a signal down to the people in that area. This signal will be received by small towers and dishes that will then convert it into a Wi-Fi or LTE network that people can connect to with their cellphones and smartphones.
Facebook says its intention is not to build networks and then operate them ourselves, but rather to quickly advance the state of these technologies to the point that they become viable solutions for operators and other partners to deploy.
Laser communication system well be used to connect the aircraft with each other and with the ground, making it possible to create a stratospheric network that can extend to even the remotest regions of the world.
Facebook's laser communications team in Woodland Hills, California, has also achieved a significant performance breakthrough. They’ve designed and lab-tested a laser that can deliver data at 10s of Gb per second — approximately 10x faster than the previous state-of-the-art in the industry — to a target the size of a dime from more than 10 miles away. The team is now starting to test these lasers in real-world conditions.
