SoftBank has accomplished a high-altitude platform station (HAPS) trial service in Japan in anticipation of its business launch in 2027.
The Japanese operator partnered with the US aerospace firm Sceye, which despatched the HAPS automobile 15,000 kilometers into the stratosphere throughout a pre-commercial flight from Roswell, New Mexico, to Japan. The 13-day journey throughout the Pacific Ocean befell from August 3 to August 23.
Through the trial, the HAPS automobile flew over Muroto Metropolis in Kochi Prefecture. It remained over the operational goal space inside a 5-kilometer radius for an prolonged interval. SoftBank related its core community to a 4G LTE-equivalent base station put in on the HAPS automobile by way of a floor gateway. Two-way communication assessments have been carried out between the HAPS automobile within the stratosphere and smartphones on the bottom.
“The assessments confirmed secure voice calls and textual content messaging, the usage of apps, akin to social media providers, and high-capacity knowledge communications, together with video calls and video streaming. SoftBank and Sceye additionally verified the operation of emergency alert messaging programs for earthquake early warnings and tsunami warnings, in addition to voice calls to the 118 maritime emergency quantity in cooperation with the Japan Coast Guard,” SoftBank stated in a assertion.
(Supply: SoftBank)
Making ready for the 6G period
In preparation for the 6G period, SoftBank is growing a “next-generation, three-dimensional communications community”, set to seamlessly combine satellite tv for pc, HAPS and terrestrial communications networks.
With this in thoughts, SoftBank additionally carried out automated drone flights in an effort to take a look at the connection between HAPS and drones. This aligns with the telecom operator’s aim of constructing a three-dimensional communications community that makes use of HAPS to supply communication providers to folks on the bottom and secure connectivity to aerial mobility programs, akin to drones.
The corporate additionally investigated the potential of edge computing within the stratosphere. To this finish, a processing server was put in on the HAPS to allow knowledge processing to be carried out instantly on the platform.
In response to SoftBank. the assessments confirmed that the common round-trip response time for processing on the HAPS server was 68 milliseconds, lowering communications latency by greater than 40% in contrast with processing within the cloud by way of the Web.
SoftBank is searching for to unlock new use circumstances that require in depth geographic attain and ultra-low latency, which it plans to realize by integrating HAPS’s wide-area communications protection with superior edge computing capabilities. These purposes span essential domains, together with bodily AI programs and real-time video analytics.
In the meantime, SoftBank and Sceye plan to make use of the information and insights obtained from these HAPS trial providers to refine the operational framework and enhance the system’s communication high quality, with the intention of launching it commercially by 2027.
“Going ahead, in collaboration with Sceye, we’ll proceed to combine a variety of applied sciences, together with communications and AI, to develop HAPS into a brand new type of social infrastructure,” stated Junichi Miyakawa, SoftBank president and CEO.
