Demonstration of free-space optical communication for long-range data links between balloons on Project Loon

Moision, Bruce; Erkmen, Baris I.; Keyes, Edward L.; Belt, Todd L.; Bowen, Oliver; Brinkley, Devin; Csonka, Paul L.; Eglington, Michael; Kazmierski, Andrei; Kim, Nam-hyong; Moody, John; Tu, Thanh; Vermeer, William

doi:10.1117/12.2253099

Cited by 35 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…Initial works concerned laser communication for inter-satellite and satellite-to-ground links [1]. More recently, high-altitude platform (HAP)-based FSO networks M. T. Dabiri have received a great deal of attention [8]- [10]. Multi-rotor (MR) UAVs are an attractive option in relatively shorter links due to their advantages of high maneuverability, small size and low cost.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Channel Modeling and Parameter Optimization for Hovering UAV-Based Free-Space Optical Links

Dabiri

Sadough

Khalighi

2018

IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun.

189

163

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Recently, the use of multi-rotor (MR) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has emerged as a promising solution for establishing flexible free-space optical (FSO) communication links. We address in this paper accurate channel modeling to assess the benefits of MR UAV-based deployment for such links. In particular, in the absence of active tracking subsystems, we derive statistical models for ground-to-UAV, UAV-to-UAV, and UAV-to-ground links over both Gamma-Gamma and lognormal atmospheric turbulence models. Unlike previous works on this topic, our proposed model considers the joint effect of atmospheric turbulence along with position and angle-of-arrival fluctuations. The high accuracy of the proposed analytical models is verified by comparing numerically solved and Monte-Carlo simulation results in terms of link outage probability. We further discuss the impact of different transmitter/receiver parameters and their optimization in view of maximizing the link availability.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Channel Modeling and Parameter Optimization for Hovering UAV-Based Free-Space Optical Links

Dabiri

Sadough

Khalighi

2018

IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun.

189

163

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Lasercom demonstrations have been carried out in a wide variety of scenarios, e.g. deep space-to-ground [2], ground-to-deep space [3], LEO-to-ground [4] [5], LEO-to-LEO [6], GEO-to-ground [7] [8], GEO-to-LEO [9] [10], GEO-to-aircraft [11], aircraft-to-ground [12] [13], aircraft-to-aircraft [14] and balloon-to-balloon [15], and a number of projects are projected for future demonstrations [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

LEO-to-ground optical communications using SOTA (Small Optical TrAnsponder) – Payload verification results and experiments on space quantum communications

et al. 2017

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Free-space optical communications have held the promise of revolutionizing space communications for a long time. The benefits of increasing the bitrate while reducing the volume, mass and energy of the space terminals have attracted the attention of many researchers for a long time. In the last few years, more and more technology demonstrations have been taking place with participants from both the public and the private sector. The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan has a long experience in this field. SOTA (Small Optical TrAnsponder) was the last NICT space lasercom mission, designed to demonstrate the potential of this technology applied to microsatellites. Since the beginning of SOTA mission in 2014, NICT regularly established communication using the Optical Ground Stations (OGS) located in the Headquarters at Koganei (Tokyo) to receive the SOTA signals, with over one hundred successful links. All the goals of the SOTA mission were fulfilled, including up to 10-Mbit/s downlinks using two different wavelengths and apertures, coarse and fine tracking of the OGS beacon, space-to-ground transmission of the on-board-camera images, experiments with different error correcting codes, interoperability with other international OGS, and experiments on quantum communications. The SOTA mission ended on November 2016, more than doubling the designed lifetime of 1-year. In this paper, the SOTA characteristics and basic operation are explained, along with the most relevant technological demonstrations.

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“…This model is applicable to any sensor-network scenario that consists of low-power RF link among remote sensors (or terminals) and mid/long-distance FSO-relaying link between an intermediate cluster head (or gateway) and an information sink. In Project Loon, for an example, hot air balloons are connected using FSO mesh links to provide LTE-level internet services to infrastructure-poor areas [15]. Airborne weather sensors linked by RF in a balloon also can be connected to an information center on the ground using FSO link.…”

Section: System Model and Fading Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical Analysis of Noise Propagation Effect for Mixed RF/FSO AF Relaying Application in Wireless Sensor Networks

Jeong

Park

Kim

2020

Sensors

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In this paper, we investigate the so-called noise propagation effect in a mixed radio-frequency/ free-space optical (RF/FSO) amplifying-and-forwarding (AF) relaying system that is applied for data transmission in wireless sensor networks. The noise propagation could be essentially severe when battery-charged sensor nodes have very limited transmit power. We provide an exact expression on the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of end-to-end signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) for a dual-hop mixed RF/FSO AF relaying system. We assume a tightly power-constrained amplifying gain at the relay, which has been usually ignored in existing performance studies for the mixed RF/FSO AF system. It however should be considered to properly evaluate the noise propagation effect especially if the relaying power is not infinite or the sensor has a poor budget in transmit power. We apply the derived exact CDF to evaluate the system performances such as outage probability, average bit-error rate, and ergodic capacity. Numerical investigation is used to justify that the proposed analysis is exactly matched with the simulation and shows that the performance gap caused by the inclusion of the noise propagation effect is significant (about 2–12%) especially when the SNR per hop is in the medium- or the low-SNR ranges (i.e., at 10–20 dB).

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Demonstration of free-space optical communication for long-range data links between balloons on Project Loon

Cited by 35 publications

References 0 publications

Channel Modeling and Parameter Optimization for Hovering UAV-Based Free-Space Optical Links

Channel Modeling and Parameter Optimization for Hovering UAV-Based Free-Space Optical Links

LEO-to-ground optical communications using SOTA (Small Optical TrAnsponder) – Payload verification results and experiments on space quantum communications

Statistical Analysis of Noise Propagation Effect for Mixed RF/FSO AF Relaying Application in Wireless Sensor Networks

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