A Fault Detection Based Routing Scheme for Google Project Loon

Abstract

Google Project Loon (GPL) is a low cost infrastructure, which is mainly developed to provide Internet connectivity to the rural and remote areas by building a hybrid wireless ad-hoc network using Balloon to Balloon Communication (B2B) and Balloon to Ground Communication (B2G). In this network, balloons are equipped with wireless transceivers and placed on stratosphere over the regions, where Internet connectivity is less. However, the performance of the network may get reduced due to the presence of faulty balloons. Here, the balloons are faulty due to damage of the balloon, out of range, hardware or software faults. In this work, a fault detection based routing scheme is proposed, where the node (user/balloon) while selects a forwarder node, checks the fault status of that node in its local database. If the node is faulty, it selects another forwarder and sends data to the destination in a shortest time. The performance of the proposed scheme over the loon project is evaluated using simulations. From the simulations, it is observed that the data should be forwarded in a fault free path for reliable communication between the user and the Internet Service Provider (ISP).