Integrate wifi station on the aircraft to support the army

The US Advanced Defense Projects Agency (DARPA) has begun a plan to expand connections for military units outside the front by using small unmanned drones (Drones) made WIFI hotspot. The goal of these mobile stations is to provide highly reliable mobile bandwidth to all military levels on an unbelievable scale by existing measures.

DARPA has just completed the first of three essential testing stages to ensure the success of the program. Phase 1 achieved positive results when millimeter-wave antennas mounted on the drone were able to navigate, quickly catch on to the target and establish stable connections between moving platforms. The self-directional millimeter antennas will allow the creation of high-capacity network formations between aerial and ground platforms.

RQ-7 Shadow unmanned aircraft

Dick Ridgway, program manager at DARPA, said: "We are very pleased with the technical achievements of self-directed millimeter wave antenna technology and millimeter wave amplification technology . This is essential to maintaining a high-wage connection and this will be an important factor to provide a speedy 4G mobile network connection for military units. "

The first phase of the program also tested a variety of other systems including low-noise signal amplifiers (LNA) and power amplifiers to enhance Wi-Fi signals within a 50km radius on the beloved project bridge. Through testing, the systems also showed an energy efficiency increase of 20% when using a chip with Gallium nitride (GaN) operating at the E band (71 GHz to 86 GHz).

Hardware including amplifiers and antennas are installed in SWAP

All hardware components of the portable Wi-Fi base station will be installed in the SWAP compartment (specialized compartment for carrying light, small-sized devices) on the wings of the RQ-7 Shadow unmanned aircraft. These components have a total weight of less than 9kg and have an energy consumption of less than 150W.

Phase 2 of the program began in March with the aim of integrating the technologies tested in phase 1 into SWAP on RQ-7 Shadow and ground-based vehicles. In particular, the engineers will test the system performance on 4 SWAP, 2 ground media and 1 fixed button on the ground.

In phase 3, the system will test the field with many UAVs and ground vehicles.