Broadband for all from High Altitude Platforms
Posted on 19 January 2004
An international project aims to make Broadband available to remote rural areas and even moving trains, thanks to ‘High Altitude Platforms’ (HAPs).
HAPs are airships or solar-powered aircraft, which are permanently located in the skies at an altitude of 20 km, above aeroplanes but below satellites.
This solution will be cheaper and more efficient than current technologies. High Altitude Platforms do not require underground cabling or masts - which can be both expensive and inconvenient - to deliver broadband.
HAPs can also serve mass markets with high-speed communications – unlike satellites. The HAPs technology is ideal for rural, suburban and other hard-to-reach areas, including users who are on the move.
“The opportunities offered by HAPs are exciting,” said Dr David Grace, the project’s Principal Scientific Officer. “Demand for fast communication is increasing all over the world, and this technology offers a unique way of delivering broadband inexpensively to people at home, in the office, and on the move.”
The project will deliver broadband connections which are 2,000 times faster than via a traditional modem and 200 times faster than today’s ‘wired’ ADSL broadband.
The University of York leads the project, known as ‘Capanina’. Researchers at York will investigate the most effective way to operate wireless communication links via HAPs, including fast propagation and resource management.
The team will develop HAPs-based systems which can use the spectrum efficiently to reach all areas. These systems will include steerable antennas which will use the latest digital signal processing.
York Electronics Centre will coordinate the international project and ensure that results from across the world are published and exploited.
The other European and Japanese partners will specialise in various aspects, including the development and construction of equipment for trials, the creation of business models, and free-space optical communications. These use ‘line of sight’ light beams to communicate at high speed between two locations.
The first objective of the Capanina project is to deliver broadband connections to rural areas across Europe. The team hopes to achieve this in the next four years.
Ultimately, the team will look at delivering Broadband to moving trains. This will involve ‘smart’ antenna systems, which link with access points on the train. This will give passengers high-speed Internet connections from ‘Wi-Fi’ enabled lap-tops.
Notes to editors:
- Pictures of High Altitude Platforms are available electronically from Nicola Coates, email njc7@york.ac.uk
- Capanina is a 5.6 million Euro project involving 14 partners from across Europe and Japan. The majority of the funding comes from the EU’s Framework 6 Programme. The project is named after the restaurant in Italy where initial discussions were held. Further information is available at www.capanina.org
- David Grace is Capanina’s Principal Scientific Officer. He is based in the Communications Research Group in York’s Department of Electronics. Graham Long of York Electronics Centre is Project Manager.
- York Electronics Centre is an industrial unit at the University of York, which provides design, development and project management services to industry.
- Other CAPANINA partners are:
- Jozef Stefan Institute (Slovenia)
- CERCOM/Dipartimento di Elettronica - Politecnico di Torino (Italy)
- EuroConcepts s.r.l (Italy)
- Universitat Politecnica Catalunya/Department.TSC (Spain)
- Carlo Gavazzi Space S.p.A. (Italy)
- Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary)
- BTexact Technologies (UK)
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (Germany)
- SkyLINC Ltd (UK)
- Centre Suisse d’Electronique et de Microtechnique SA (Switzerland)
- Contraves Space AG (Switzerland)
- Communications Research Laboratory (Japan)
- High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) are either airships or planes, which operate in the stratosphere, 17 - 22 km above the ground.
- The Department of Electronics at York has a high reputation for teaching and research, with current research funding exceeding 5 million Euro. The key personnel for Capanina are the members of the Communications Research Group and Physical Layer Research Group, which collectively have approximately 40 staff and research students. The Groups have participated in a number of EU projects including the HeliNet project, the forerunner of CAPANINA, and FLOWS which is dealing with flexible convergence of wireless standards and services, including multi-band antenna array design.
The Group’s other activities and expertise, include:- System level communications system design, including specialist knowledge of radio resource management for satellites and terrestrial systems
- Adaptive modulation and coding, including MIMO and turbo codes
- Digital receiver architecture design and signal processing
- Millimetrewave and microwave hardware design Applied Electromagnetics and EMC.