NEW YORK-It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s `super craft’!
Look up in the sky over California’s Mojave Desert on the morning of Sept. 22, and you’re likely to see the first public flight of the High Latitude, Long Operation Proteus Aircraft.
Built by Mojave-based Scaled Composites Inc., the first commercial application for HALO-Proteus is to fly fixed patterns at 52,000 to 60,000 feet over major cities to deliver low-cost wireless telecommunications services. The high-flying altitude of the planes is intended to place them above the disturbances of bad weather and to allow transmissions to bypass obstructions caused by foliage, buildings and terrain.
Angel Technologies Corp., St. Louis, said it will use the HALO-Proteus aircraft, which the Federal Aviation Administration has certified “to provide round-the-clock service … that will be deployed selectively to premier markets throughout the world.”
Burt Rutan, president of Scaled Composites and chief platform designer of the HALO airplane, is a board member of Angel Technologies.
“Angel plans to provide broadband services to businesses and consumers already utilizing licensed high-frequency spectrum allocated for terrestrial broadband applications,” the company said.
“[We are] currently in discussion with a number of spectrum holders who are looking to benefit from [our] rapid and ubiquitous buildout characteristics to make [maximum] use of [their licenses].”
A single HALO-Proteus aircraft can provide cellular telephone and broadband-on-demand data relay services over an area of thousands of square miles, Scaled Composites said. A typical operation would deploy three such aircraft on overlapping shifts to provide non-stop coverage plus backup.
The fixed-wing plane will carry a 20-foot suspended antenna pod for commercial communications applications. It will fly in the stratosphere in a circular footprint of 50 to 75 miles in diameter while a pivoting pylon allows the antenna to maintain a level altitude.
The HALO-Proteus’ one-ton payload includes an antenna array and electronics for providing wireless communications. The antenna array creates hundreds of contiguous virtual cells, each comparable to a terrestrial tower offering broadband service at millimeter-wave frequencies.
“The communications package can be much more powerful than that of a conventional earth-orbiting satellite,” Scaled Composites said.
“Proteus is able to operate at approximately one-tenth the cost of other platforms like the Lockheed Martin U-2 or Teledyne-Ryan Global Hawk UAV.”
The HALO network also can augment and supplement satellite systems by serving as a traffic coordinator or as a relay of gigabit-per-second data traffic via space-to-earth licensed millimeter wave frequencies, Angel Technologies said.
“Developing nations and new services in developed markets can employ HALO as a very rapid and cost-effective means of providing nationwide telecommunications and data relay service,” Scaled Composites said.
Angel said it has designed the HALO network and the customer premises equipment for ease of installation and use.
