Google is working project SkyBender: 5G internet through solar-powered drones

Internet Giant Google is working on a project names SkyBender, which provides 5G High Speed internet through solar-powered drones.

The company has set up its own flight control center at Spaceflight Operations Center and is temporarily using 15,000 square feet of hangar space in Gateway to Space terminal designed for the much-delayed Virgin Galactic spaceflights (Google).

Project SkyBender is using drones to experiment with millimetre-wave radio transmissions, and this technology could underpin next generation 5G wireless internet access.

The SkyBender is technically part of Google’s air balloon Wi-Fi project aimed at a similar goal of bringing remote parts of the world online.

“The huge advantage of millimetre wave is access to new spectrum because the existing cellphone spectrum is overcrowded. It’s packed and there’s nowhere else to go,” Jacques Rudell, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle and specialist in this technology, was quoted as saying.

Rudell also explained Google was facing and said that millimetre wave transmissions have shorter range than phone signals and hence will die out at the one-tenth distance of a 4G signal. Google can only extend the range of this signal by using a phased array of this signal which is very difficult, complex and burns a lot of power, the professor said.

Google’s Project Loon that plans to deliver wireless internet access using balloons floating above the stratosphere is already in the works. Project SkyBender is yet to be made official by the company. That being said, if something like SkyBender is actually in the works, high-speed 5G wireless internet may not be a distant dream any more.