Loon Network Data

Loon sought to provide data connectivity to under-served regions via 4G LTE cell service hosted on free-floating, high-altitude balloons. To backhaul data, the balloons used point-to-point radio links to connect with each other and to transceivers connected to the network core on the ground (aka. "ground stations"). These links were selected & commanded by a centralized Temporo-Spatial Software Defined Network (TS-SDN) controller running on the ground. More details about the system architecture and operation can be found in the Loon Library or in "SDN in the Stratosphere: Loon's Aerospace Mesh Network" from the proceedings of SIGCOMM 2022.

The dataset provided here consists of internal state from the TS-SDN and network telemetry gathered from serving commercial traffic and R&D experiments. Loon’s networking use case is unique in several ways:

• Balloons and their base stations/eNodeBs were located in the stratosphere and changed position as they were pushed by the wind.

• The network was comprised of a combination of LTE, WiFi, E-band, Wired technologies

• The topology of our E-band backhaul meshes spanned thousands of kilometers and changed frequently.

• eNodeBs entered and exited the cellular network depending on their position and the availability of power and backhaul connectivity.

Loon collected data using system telemetry from Loon assets (balloons, ground stations, etc) in the field. These logs were extracted from various storage systems and processed for external publication.