When Pigs Fly – NOWs Replace SOWs and COWs

Notwithstanding our technological prowess, Mother Nature has a sinister sense of humor, and stuff happens beyond our control. When disaster strikes, it is crucial to establish a communication grid as quickly and efficiently as possible. Bandwidth-hungry networks help coordinate search and rescue, law enforcement and recovery personnel. Sure, there exist “cellular on wheels” (COWs) and “system on wheels” (SOWs), which are carted on trucks into hotspots, but what if there are no roads, or personnel is beyond the line of sight of the antennas?

Mutualink to the rescue. In this patent application, a network grid of drones is proposed. This “network on wings”, or NOW, overcomes the deficiencies of land-based communications networks. The drones can talk to one antenna, which relays information to another antenna, leapfrogging data over vast, hostile terrain, as quickly as the drones can fly to their destination.

“The general problems with cellular on wheels (COWs) and system on wheels (SOWs) are coverage and bandwidth limitations, and physical site accessibility problems. For example, in an earthquake, hurricane or flood related-emergency, the area might be physically inaccessible–driving the vehicle to the scene can be impractical or impossible. In military scenarios, the vehicle may not be able to drive to the scene in a reasonable time for operations to commence. […] Embodiments of the present invention provide a dynamic wireless aerial mesh network (e.g., a network on wings). Dynamic wireless aerial mesh network systems, methods and computer program product embodiments provide real-time persistent wide area communication and other services where the wide area is physically inaccessible via ground transportation. In addition, embodiments include the formation of a decentralized mesh supernetwork comprising two or more dynamic wireless aerial mesh networks where each dynamic wireless aerial mesh network is owned by a different agency (e.g., a secure community).”

Here is [a rather broad] Claim 1: A method, comprising:

• receiving a wireless communication from a ground base station associated with a first agency;
• and sending the wireless communication to an end unit radio transceiver associated with the first agency, wherein the sending is via a first aerial node (AN) of two or more ANs of a first dynamic wireless aerial mesh network that provides persistent wide area communications service, and wherein a flight pattern of the two or more ANs of the first dynamic wireless aerial mesh network is adaptive.

Title: “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DYNAMIC WIRELESS AERIAL MESH NETWORK”

US Patent Application Publication No: 20150063202

Filed (US): March 13, 2013

Published: March 5, 2015