Balloons in the Sky: Unveiling the Characteristics and Trade-Offs of the Google Loon Service
Pablo Serrano, Marco Gramaglia, Francesco Mancini, Luca Chiaraviglio, Giuseppe Bianchi
Abstract
The Google's Loon <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{TM}$</tex-math></inline-formula> 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.