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Balloons in the Sky: Unveiling the Characteristics and Trade-offs of the Google Loon Service

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dc.affiliation.dptoUC3M. Departamento de Ingeniería Telemáticaes
dc.affiliation.grupoinvUC3M. Grupo de Investigación: Network Technologieses
dc.contributor.authorSerrano Yáñez-Mingot, Pablo
dc.contributor.authorGramaglia, Marco
dc.contributor.authorMancini, Francesco
dc.contributor.authorChiraraviglio, Luca
dc.contributor.authorBianchi, Giuseppe
dc.contributor.funderAgencia Estatal de Investigación (España)es
dc.date.accessioned2023-05-08T11:14:51Z
dc.date.available2023-05-08T11:14:51Z
dc.date.issued2023-06-01
dc.description.abstractThe Google's Loon[TM] initiative aims at covering rural or underdeveloped areas via fleets of high-altitude balloons supporting LTE connectivity. But how effective and stable can be the coverage provided by a network deployed via propulsion-free balloons, floating in the sky, and only loosely controllable through altitude variations? To provide some insights on the relevant performance and trade-offs, in this paper we gather real-world data from publicly available flight tracking services, and we analyze coverage and service stability in three past deployment scenarios. Besides employing a variety of metrics related to spatial and temporal coverage, we also assess service continuity, by also leveraging recently proposed “meaningful availability” metrics. While our analyses show that balloons are certainly a cost-effective way to provide a better-than-nothing and delay-tolerant service, there is yet no empirical evidence that an increase in the number of overlapping balloons may be rewarded with a substantial performance increase - in other words, we suspect that guaranteeing coverage and service stability levels comparable to that of a terrestrial cellular network is a challenging goal.en
dc.description.statusPublicadoes
dc.format.extent13
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitationIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, (2023), 22(6), pp.: 3165-3178.en
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2021.3135976
dc.identifier.issn1536-1233
dc.identifier.publicationfirstpage3165
dc.identifier.publicationissue6
dc.identifier.publicationlastpage3178
dc.identifier.publicationtitleIEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MOBILE COMPUTINGen
dc.identifier.publicationvolume22
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10016/37259
dc.identifier.uxxiAR/0000028960
dc.language.isoengen
dc.publisherIEEEen
dc.relation.projectIDGobierno de España. PID2019-108713RB-C52es
dc.rights© 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.en
dc.rights.accessRightsopen accessen
dc.subject.ecienciaInformáticaes
dc.subject.ecienciaTelecomunicacioneses
dc.subject.otherDigital divideen
dc.subject.otherUnmanned Aerial Vehiclesen
dc.subject.otherUAVen
dc.subject.otherHigh Altitude Platform Stationen
dc.subject.otherHAPsen
dc.subject.otherLoon serviceen
dc.titleBalloons in the Sky: Unveiling the Characteristics and Trade-offs of the Google Loon Serviceen
dc.typeresearch article*
dc.type.hasVersionAM*
dspace.entity.typePublication
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