MTN has completed a project to deploy four 4G/LTE-based wireless broadband base stations at a site in the Northern Cape where a project is underway to smash the land-speed record.

The Bloodhound SSC Project, a global education initiative, wants not only to break the previous land-speed record of 1 227,9km/h, but wants to push the barrier even further by reaching 1 600km/h. The record-breaking attempts will take place over the next few years at the Hakskeenpan in the Northern Cape desert.

The MTN towers, which range from 15m to 70m in height, will be used to beam video and data from the car to the outside world.

“In 2015 or 2016, when the team attempts, initially, to break the existing land-speed record set by Thrust SSC in 1997, and then push on to an unprecedented 1 600km/h, the world will be watching,” the Bloodhound Project says. “Video and data will be streamed live and shared with audiences in 220 countries, supporting what will become one of the biggest news stories on the planet.”

“Getting live data and images at supersonic speeds off the car is not only extremely tricky, it is pivotal to our ambitions,” says Conor La Grue, commercial and product sponsorship leader of the Bloodhound Project. “From the very beginning, we have shared our story as we have gone along. It is fundamental to our education goal. If we can’t show what we’re doing in the desert, and involve our global audience in the adventure, then we will have failed –- no matter how fast we go.”

The Bloodhound SSC Project hopes to have at least three live video channels with live data coming off the car. Each will provide 3,5Mbit/s of data, enough for high-definition broadcasts.

A detailed analysis of the Hakskeenpan area was done before MTN’s construction teams could start work on the base station and three other towers at specific places on Hakskeenpan, known as “Speedweek”, “KK Hoog” and “Klipkolk”. The video feeds will be sent via microwave signalling to Upington. From here, Bloodhound data can link into a national fibre network and be distributed worldwide.

The completed KK Hoog site is already fully powered by solar and wind energy, while a generator is used to power the Speedweek site when the venue at Hakskeenpan is used for tests or events. A hybrid system of solar energy and Eskom power will be used at technology centre and at Klipkolk.

The system will be put through its paces in the coming months and will culminate in a trial with a mock-up section of the Bloodhound Supersonic Car tail fin with the antenna attached and the on-board car electronics to measure performance. Once these receive the green light, the systems will be built into the car itself.

On the decision to use a fixed mast system in conjunction with high-speed Long Term Evolution (LTE) modem links from the car itself, rather than follow the example of Formula 1 racing that uses a series of helicopters and high speed communication systems to shoot footage above the track, La Grue says: “For Bloodhound, a 1 700 km/h helicopter at low altitude and in close proximity to a car that generates shock waves off the ground was never going to be an option. The car, after all, will be able to travel almost five football pitches in just one second – hard to keep up with.”

MTN South Africa GM for capital projects Brandon Gombert says that even though the modems to be used at Hakskeenpan are custom-built for Bloodhound, the core 4G/LTE equipment used is the same as is being rolled out to ordinary consumers. “It’s exactly the same system that you would be using to surf the web from your LTE mobile phone, except that we use temporarily-allocated 800MHz spectrum for Bloodhound, and not the 1,8GHz spectrum normally used by mobile operators,” Gomert says.

“We lock the channels to each other to control the frequencies we use and to ensure these are the best ones available,” he says. “The Bloodhound SSC is the only customer connected to a private network, so there will always be a good connection available.”