MWC: Vodafone shows flying drone as fiber optic patch
Vodafone wants to use flying drones to bridge short-term fiber optic gaps. Lasers from the Google Group help with this.
Flying drone with laser terminal
(Image: Vodafone)
Fiber optic cables are damaged time and time again, usually by careless construction work, but mudslides, fires, earthquakes and even volcanic eruptions can also destroy the fiber optic cables. If the optical fiber leads to a mobile phone base station, it goes offline. Vodafone alone has to deal with this every three to five days in Europe. In some cases, laser-equipped flying drones, which the network operator will be showing at the MWC (formerly Mobile World Congress) in Barcelona in March, are intended to provide a remedy.
Laser links for data transmission have been working close to the ground for a long time. Their reliability can be limited by various environmental factors, including fog, haze or smoke, as well as short-term interruptions caused by birds or monkeys climbing on poles. In most cases, however, a connection that works 99% of the time is better than no connection at all.
Vodafone is now lifting the laser terminals into the air. In Seville, the network operator said it had demonstrated how they work. To do so, it used two flying drones, each with a laser terminal from Alphabet subsidiary Taara mounted on it. In this way, the drones established a wireless optical data connection between each other over a distance of around three kilometers. Each of the drones was connected to a mobile phone transmitter via a cable, known as tethering. Thanks to tethering, the drones can also be supplied with power, which enables long flight times.
Videos by heise
From the stratospheric balloon to the ground and back into the air again
Taara is one of those companies that the Google Group regards as a highly speculative investment that could achieve great things if successful. This includes Loon, which wanted to connect remote regions to the Internet using stratospheric balloons. This concept did not prove successful, but the energy-efficient laser terminals developed for multi-gigabit connections between the balloons live on in the new Alphabet project Taara.
Initially a few floors lower, for example in 2021 for the broadband connection of the capitals of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo across the Congo River. Taara lasers connect Anguilla with neighboring islands, bring remote areas of Tonga online and bridge network gaps in India and several African countries. T-Mobile USA has also relied on Taara laser connections as backhaul for mobile cell towers for short-term crowds at events. Provided there is a direct line of sight, the terminals can achieve up to 20 gigabits per second over a distance of up to 20 kilometers and are said to draw only 40 watts per terminal.
(ds)
