SDN in the stratosphere: loon's aerospace mesh network

The Loon project provided 4G LTE connectivity to under-served regions in emergency response and commercial mobile contexts using base stations carried by high-altitude balloons. To backhaul data, Loon orchestrated a moving mesh network of point-to-point radio links that interconnected balloons with each other and to ground infrastructure. This paper presents insights from 3 years of operational experience with Loon's mesh network above 3 continents.