VEDA
HierarchiCally Enabled Long-Range Internet Over Seas
It is currently known that internet connections can only take place on land.
We tried to find a way to provide internet to people in the middle of the ocean by using a mesh network between the terrestrial, maritime and aerial domains.
Team VEDA - Project HELIOS
Here are the simulations we generated to sustain our approach of wired drones and balloons:
In this example, you can see the maximum connection distance between two wired drones on their respective ships.
Here you can see the maximum connection distance between two balloons.
In this picture we simulated the connection distance between a balloon and a ground relay.
Here is illustrated the whole theoretical mesh that contains balloons, ships, and a ground relay.
In the following images we show our hardware prototype of the optical connection between two balloons:
The transmitter. In this care we used a high power laser diode.
The positioning system. We use 2 hard drive heads to make a galvo laser system. This kind of system is used industrially because of it's extremely high precision. The steps in which the mirrors move are almost inexistent.
The receiver. In this case we used 4 solar panels to simplify our design, but in a real world scenario this would be replaced by a more directional receiver.
Team Introduction
Our team consists of different people united by one passion. We are team VEDA, and our motto is " Strive to do better ".
Nicola Andrei-Nicolae
Nicolescu Vlad
Iova Alin - Petre
Head of the electronics department, a dedicated and hardworking person, always striving towards perfection.
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Next to Nicola Andrei, Vlad has proven himself out to be a very talented person and a very important asset to the team.
He has a very good eye for observing even the smallest mistakes. He is always making sure that the final project will be delivered without a scratch.
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Petrescu Alex
Istrate Darius
Iova Daniel - Alexandru
He designed vital parts of the project as well as help with the research, thus making a huge difference in the development of our work.
He is a sincere person that likes helping people. He enjoys finding out details about the things that he is passionate about and describes himself out to be a hardworking person.
He is one of the most determined and ambitious people in our team. He gives his heart and soul into any project and wants everything to end up perfect.
Grecu Elena Francesca
She is the heart of the team, taking everything personally, thus striving for the best results at everything she puts her mind to.
It is currently known that internet connections can only take place on land.
We tried to find a way to provide internet to people in the middle of the ocean by using a mesh network between the terrestrial, maritime and aerial domains.
Balloons
These balloons travel above airplanes and most weather events, at aproximately 20km above sea level.
Our balloons will be deployed from one of several launch sites located at sea. Predictive models of the winds and an autonomous decision-making algorithm determines the movement of each balloon up and down wind layers thus keeping it in the same aproximate active area of the transmission cone.
A group of balloons can be part or can help create a mesh network. With the help of its self-positioning system and it's high altitude, it can easily connect and communicate with other balloons.
Because each one is equipped with a very directional antenna pointed towards the earth, they can connect to users that are not part of a network linked mesh, or users that are at a very long distance from the nearest access point in an area of roughly 80km in diameter.
Thanks to its clever positioning system, the balloons can hover above the same general location they are deployed to, with an absolute positioning error of 1km. The entire network can work fully autonomously, efficiently routing connectivity across balloons and ground stations while taking in account balloon motion, obstructions and weather events.
Every balloon is being tracked using GPS, constantly sending its altitude and its exact position in every moment. When a balloon is ready to be taken out of service, the baloon is released or vented (depending on its condition) and the flight capsule lands in the water with the help of a parachute.
Descents are coordinated with local air traffic control in hopes of land the balloon safely Naval recovery teams then collect it by finding the beacon signal emitted when the electronics come in contact with water thus helping reuse the computer inside the flight capsule as well as other electronics. Once recovered, every balloon's capsule outer shell is replaced since the plastic polystyrine gets damaged while on flight at such extreme weathers of -90 degrees Celsius.
Even though a balloon's average cost is higher than the one of a drone's, it solves one of the most important problems that most wouldn't have even taken into consideration: internet for those who aren't located near any boat or land. We estimate the price to be around $20.000 per balloon and $1.000 per drone. Since most of the problems can be solved by drones, the number of balloons required can be limited to only a few balloons per user, located in a remote area (depending on the distance between the closest mesh member and the user). The balloons can also be deployed to assist in the completion of an incomplet mesh network (i.e. when a group of ships is too far away from the main mesh, thus not having any internet connectivity, and needeng their range extended).
Problems and challanges we faced
Every project has its challenges,and our team has learned that the hard way.The main problem we faced was the mesh network. After a lot of thought we have managed to find the problem that many others hadn't even thought of: what does one do if they find themselves in the middle of nowhere without any means of communication, access to the internet or the ability to contact their loved ones.Another problem we had to face was making the balloons communicate with each other, but we think we managed to provide an inexpensive suitable solution for that.
DEVELOPEMENT PROCESS
We have decided to create a prototype of the communication between the balloons. The system consists of a laser transmitter, receiver and a positioning system. We designed a Python script that sends the coordinates of a QR code located within a camera's video stream to the positioning system. This system uses a galvo mirror scan head to help guide the laser to the receiver. In the final application the coordinates received from the Python script will be replaced with GPS coordinates. We used Python and a QR code for the sake of our presentation to simulate GPS position indoors.
