The drone-carried WiFi communication system aims to provide WiFi infrastructure where commercial infrastructures such as AT&T and Verizon are destroyed or not available. Examples of such situations include earthquakes, rural areas and battlefields. The drone-carried WiFi communication system can provide fast-deployable and highly-flexible long-distance WiFi link for real-time text, phone, and video transmission. Potential customers include emergency response agencies such as FEMA and fire departments. With the drone-carried WiFi system, people in the emergency zone will be able to connect to outside world for information exchange through email, twitter, facebook, etc. The rescue team can also utilize the WiFi networks for task coordination and information sharing. Comparing to other existing solutions such as telecommunication trucks, the drone-carried WiFi systems can be dispatched to the destination faster, more flexibly, and with lower cost.
This I-Corps team has completed the drone-carried WiFi alpha-prototype and successfully tested the WiFi signal transmission in the air. The key technology to enable long-range WiFi transmission is to use directional instead of omnidirectional antennae by focusing all the energy in one direction. While directional antennae increase the transmission range, they require the transmitter to always face the receiver. To achieve this, the team has developed a heading control to automatically align the headings of the two antennae, despite the high mobility of drones. In this project, the team aims to transfer the demonstrable drone-carried on-demand information infrastructure to the market place. The success of this project will lead to a new start-up on the design, development and commercialization of communication infrastructures for drone networks.
