Google Conducts ‘Project Loon’ Tests in Central California

In a posting on its Project Loon Google+ page, the Project Loon team said last week that it has been busy conducting a series of research flights in California's Central Valley.

The team reported that “On our most recent research flight we overflew Fresno, a nearby city, to get statistics on how the presence of lots of other radio signals (signal-noise) in cities affects our ability to transmit Internet. It turns out that providing Internet access to a busy city is hard because there are already many other radio signals around, and the balloons’ antennas pick up a lot of that extra noise. This increases the error-rate in decoding the Loon signal, so the signal has to be transmitted multiple times, decreasing the effective bandwidth.”

The purpose of the test flights is to evaluate difference approaches for improving the technology in areas such as power systems (solar panel orientation and battery), envelope design, and radio configuration. The team said the tests over Fresno will help them understand how signals and noise interfere with the signals from the balloon so they can determine the signal strength needed to communicate effectively.

Doug Lung

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack.
A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.