Q: Where did the original idea come from? Who dreamed this up, and when, and how?
A: The initial idea came from Sanswire Technologies, an Atlanta, Georgia-based Wi-Fi company, which GlobeTel purchased in 2004. Globetel through its subsidiary Sanswire Networks, has assembled a world class (ex-NASA) design and engineering team, capable of taking the concept forward. Through detailed computer modeling, Sanswire Networks re-designed and constructed a prototype – “Sanswire One” – in California. A new and improved Sanswire Two will make its first high altitude flight later this year.
Q: How large an area will one airship serve with wireless broadband?
A: Currently we plan to cover a footprint with a 200 mile radius.
Q: If one “Stratellite™” has line-of-sight to an area the size of Texas, why would it take 300 to cover the continental USA?
A: We operate airships as a fleet, in which they act as a sort of mesh network to provide coverage. There is a limit to the number of subscribers per airship, due to spectrum and frequency issues. Therefore as the bandwidth requirement increases, we add airships. If you were to calculate the number of airships to provide coverage, but not to support large numbers of subscribers, then the initial number of airships could be far less. If we project a national broadband network of many millions of subscribers, the fleet would grow to 300 airships.
Q: What methods do you propose to use for the applications such as cellular, 3G/4G mobile, MMDS, paging, fixed wireless telephony, HDTV and others?
A: That depends on the perceived requirements in each market. All forms of wireless communications are possible.
Q: The “Stratellites™” will run on solar power. What technologies are used in the solar array? Is it only the top surface that’s covered? How much electrical power will the array produce? Will the Stratellite need to carry big batteries to operate at night?
A: We plan on using a thin-film photovoltaic array, on the top of the airship. We plan to have adequate power to charge batteries for operation through the night cycle.
Q: What’s special about the lifting gas technology? . . . How long will it take for a Stratellite to reach cruising altitude?
A: The lifting gas technology is proprietary. While we need to be conscious of winds aloft as we launch, the rate of ascent is 1000 feet per minute, so it doesn’t take long to reach the desired altitude. Descent is slower.
Q: You intend to bring the each ship down to earth for a refit every 18 months. What will that involve?
A: Refurbishing and upgrading the electronics, checking of the airship, and renewal of the batteries as needed.
Q: 65,000 feet – the proposed cruising level -- is above the altitude of any current commercial or civil aviation. What about military aircraft, or future commercial aviation that may go higher than present limits? Will the Stratellite™ need to carry warning strobes?
A: Yes, it’s unlikely we will have many commercial aircraft at 65,000, but in the interests of safety we will have all the normal aviation safety measures.
Questions on Stratellite: Technical
Physical
Q. What materials are used to construct the Stratellite™?
A. The Stratellite’s space frame is constructed with advanced composite materials, while the outer covering is reinforced Tedlar.
Q. Is the strength and weight of such material important?
A. Yes. This is addressed by the reinforced design and choice of airship materials.
Q. What are the main concerns for high altitude airships?
A. Four Major Concerns are Gross Weight of Airship, Lift Generated by Airship (Size or Volume of Airship), Power needed to Station Keep, and Aerodynamics to optimize the above three concerns.
Q. How is the Stratellite™ lifted to the desired altitude?
A.Airshipst float using the buoyancy of the lifting gas, assisted by the propulsion units. It wil be GPS guided and ground controlled.
Q. How does the Stratellite™ maintain its station-keeping at its desired altitude?
A. Once on station at 65k ft, it will be guided by on board GPS and its computer controlled propulsion, which continually faces the airship into the prevailing wind. Ample power is available to meet the speed and force of the wind at this altitude. Of course, the air is much less powerful at this altitude.
Q. What is the nominal accuracy?
A. Requirements for station keeping vary, but it has been designed to meet the US Air force requirement of within 5 miles on nominal GPS coordinate 97% of time. From a telecommunication perspective, we can exceed this requirement.
Q. What is the Stratellite™ life cycle? How often does it need to be brought down?
A. Actually, we plan to bring the airship down and retrofit and/or refurbish in regular intervals well before the life cycle is over. Unlike Satellites, which are generally difficult to recover, Stratellites™ are fully reclaimable and reusable.
Q. Are there any physical risks at its desired altitude that we should be aware of (such as risk of explosion or risk of falling down)?
A. There is no risk of explosion as there are no flammable materials on board. If their was a major hole in the gas lifting cells, the airship would float down, due to the relative slow loss of helium to total volume of cells.
Lifetime and Cost
Q. How can a Stratellite™ remain in the air (i.e. how can remain on station before being brought down for maintenance & replacement)?
A. We plan to develop airships that can remain on station for up to 18 months, but bringing an airship down is not difficult. The cost of bringing down an airship (replaced by second airship or UAV while in for service) is nominal.
Q. Once the Stratellite™ is brought down, what components have to be changed or filled before re-launch?
A. We plan to upgrade payload, communications equipment, and helium replacement and check the airship and solar array for physical damage, if any.
Q. What’s the approximate coverage?
A. To provide initial full geographical coverage, we plan to deploy several airships. As subscribers increase, there is a physical limit of users per airship. Deployment of additional services, like optics for surveillance and remote sensing do not effect telecommunications except for the added weight and power usage, but certain bundled packages may.
Payload, service and equipment
Q. What are the main advantages of Stratellite™ over other technologies?
A. If you mean compared with Satellites then low cost, speed of deployment, ability to use IP and Cell transmissions would be key advantages. If you mean compared with terrestrial network, then obviously cost, speed of deployment and ability to use most if not all types of wireless communications would be central. It is not affected by terrestrial events, hurricanes, vandalism, and terrorism. Vertical transmission, or direct line of sight is major advantage over non line of sight, obstacles etc. in a terrestrial network. It is WIMAX at 65,000ft. The advantages we feel are very obvious.
Q. What does the Stratellite™ network look like? Which topology is expected?
A. The network will get its backhaul over fiber connections.
- Point-to-point links will bring the bandwidth up to the airship.
- Routers and switches within the airship assign the bandwidth to the different transponders.
- Point-to-multipoint radios will distribute the bandwidth to the CPE units on the ground.
- Optional ground repeaters will act as fill in units, where necessary.
- If multiple airships are used in a region, inter airship communication provides additional bandwidth and redundancy.
- We anticipate total capacity aroud 1 Gbit/s. Without frequency reuse, at least 400 MHz of spectrum may be required to obtain this capacity.
Q. How large is the nominal coverage area?
A. This depends on the frequency band used. A VHF frequency allows more that 500 km radius. If UHF is available, a 250 km radius is possible. At 3.5 GHz, the radius would be 75 km.
User Terminals
Q. What type of antenna will be used?
A. This depends on the frequency band. In VHF/UHF, normal TV antennae can be used, crossyagis are better (circular polarization).
Q. What is the anticipated carrier type and channel access scheme? (e.g. DVB-like, MF-TDMA, CDMA etc.)
A. DVB-RCT according to ETSI EN 301 958. WIMAX according to IEEE 802.16-2004 and 802.16e in the future. All Modulation schemes are OFDM or OFDMA:
Q. What are the expected frequency bands to be used? A. VHF/UHF, 2.6GHz, 3.5 GHz, 5-6 GHz
Q. Is it a line-of-sight application? Can it be complimented by some terrestrial gap-filler, using the same bands?
A. It is non line of sight, as OFDM with 256 to 2048 FFT is used. For long distances, line of sight might be necessary for the link budget. We plan to have terrestrial wireless routers as fill in repeater stations to cover indoor areas.
Q. The concept of HAP has been around for many years. What have been the major breakthroughs, which have yet to be overcome to actually implement it?
A. The advances in light weight materials, and new power possibilities, from solar technology, energy storage, energy management and propulsion over the last 2 years has assisted our airship development .
Q. What is the Stratellite™ Telecom solution?
A. The Stratellite is an excellent platform to deliver wireless services due to its 125.000 mile coverage. Sanswire will allow partners to deploy their own equipment or will build a customized solution based on technologies using the Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and DECT standards. With present cellular technology standards, Sanswire will deploy cellular coverage to a 30 degree cone of coverage. It will also extend cellular coverage through the use of IP based phones via SIP technology.
Q. What technologies are used for Stratellite™ communication?
A. We will assist our partners in meeting the needs of their customers. We have developed innovative WiMAX/Wi-Fi solutions that can deliver quality voice, data and video communications. We are also working with leading development companies to utilize the 802.16E Mobile Standard. Our solutions are fully certified by the WiMAX Forum and ETSI. They can also operate via existing and future Wi-Fi, WiMAX and DECT standards. We also have the ability to manufacture and fully ruggedize existing and custom client solutions for high altitude operation, with superior throughput, durability and Quality of Service.
Q. What are the telecom devices in Stratellite™?
A. Our advanced stratospheric base station’s will share much in common with the base stations we deploy in our terrestrial solution, thus allowing these systems to be efficiently merged once our Stratellites have been deployed. We will have the capability to use all standard telecommunication equipment, in addition to our own solutions.
Q. What devices/SuperHub™ technologies are used in terrestrial applications?
A. GlobeTel is an FCC licensed 214 international Carrier and plans on working to deploy SuperHub™ VOIP nodes.
Q. What protocols are used for communication?
A. GlobeTel’s products are based on the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.
Q. What frequencies can be used for communication?
A. Every frequency can be used, but our solution can be customized according current requirements and regulations.
Q. How is the service delivered?
A. Sanswire services will be delivered via five main paths:
- Directly to a home, business or vehicle via the 802.16E standard using a fixed WiMAX terminal.
- Directly to standard mobile devices
- Indirectly via HotZone 4010 Outdoor Base Station Repeaters (600M range)
- Indirectly via Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) using our HomeZone or Ethernet Antenna
- Indirectly via the HotZone 4010 and standard Wi-Fi devices
Q. Explain the management functionality?
A. Sanswire will utilize an advanced software management system that can be deployed remotely to centralize important management and bandwidth functions.
Q. What other value added services are available?
A. Sanswire may also offer advanced VoIP and video services, in addition to other government emergency and security services.
Q. What WiMAX Frequencies are required for operation?
A. We can operate in any frequency. However, the most common commercial frequencies are the 2.5 GHz, 3.5 GHz and 5 GHz spectrum. In addition we can adapt our radios to work in frequencies different that these frequencies.
Q. What Stratellite end user equipment is required?
A. Subscriber shouldn’t need anything different than what is available in the market and can use standard wireless cards or wireless ready computers. Although the WiMAX standard has not been formally adopted, Sanswire is working closely with leading developers so that it can use the 802.16E and other future standards to back haul IP and where necessary to use our base stations to convert signals to the latest 802.11 Wi-Fi standard.
Q. How many antennas are needed per user ?
A. Subscribers don’t need any antenna with Wi-Fi, but could need one antenna in the property when WiMAX is available. It also depends on frequencies used.
Q. How many users per network? How much bandwidth per user? How much bandwidth per access point interface? A. The number of users per network would depend on what the client wants to target. We can build networks for different types of demographics. Bandwidth per subscriber, bandwidth per access point, interfaces would depend what the client would like to offer. We can provide bandwidth per user from 0 to 20 Mbps. The access points could handle up to 80 Mbps of bandwidth.
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