BT Group and Stratospheric Platforms Ltd (SPL) will test a High-Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) aircraft providing wireless coverage over the United Kingdom’s hardest to reach areas. The test will use SPL’s antenna technology, which can provide uninterrupted 4G and 5G connectivity direct to consumer smartphones.
The phased array antenna is capable of speeds of up to 150 Mbps across areas as wide as 87 miles or 5,791 square miles (an area equivalent to the average footprint of 450 cell towers), through 500 individually steerable beams. Additionally, the phased array antenna and the flight platform will be powered by hydrogen, providing sustainable connectivity.
In addition to extending the reach of existing U.K. network infrastructure, the HAPS solution could provide a fallback for terrestrial networks in the event of a disaster, supporting humanitarian aid. Furthermore, it has potential applications for remote monitoring across various industrial and agricultural use cases, improving efficiency of operation.
The first step in the test is the development of a secure 5G HAPS communications demonstration system. SPL’s phased array antenna will be placed on a high building to test its interaction with BT’s 5G secure architecture, connecting with its Open RAN testbed. This test will support multiple user groups and different potential use cases, concurrently on the same network. Trials will be conducted at BT’s global R&D headquarters at Adastral Park located near Martlesham Heath, Suffolk, United Kingdom.
In October 2020, Stratospheric Platforms Ltd successfully tested high-speed LTE/4G data and voice connectivity via a remotely piloted aircraft operating in the stratosphere and integrated into Deutsche Telekom AG’s live terrestrial network.
Reader Interactions