Alphabet Project Uses Light Beams To Bring Broadband To Remote Regions (newatlas.com) 50
An Alphabet X innovation lab project has been working on a high-speed wireless optical communications network that uses beams of light instead of cables or radio waves, and folks in Kenya will be the first to benefit from the fruits of these labors. New Atlas reports: Project Taara, a part of Alphabet's X moonshot factory, has been working on a wireless optical technology that could deliver high-speed, high-capacity connectivity to remote areas using a network of light emitters and receivers. The initiative has now partnered with the Econet Group to install its technology in Sub-Saharan Africa, starting with Kenya. Rather than rely on cables to carry data, which can prove challenging or costly to roll out in the region, Project Taara will send information at up to 20 Gbps using a narrow, invisible beam of light. The beam is transmitted between Taara terminals to create a network of line-of-sight data links, with up to 20 km (12 mi) between two links possible.
There does need to be a constant flow of data between the links, so engineers place the terminals high above ground on poles, rooftops and towers. The technology has already undergone pilot testing in Kenya (and India) and will now roll out from existing Liquid Telecom (a subsidiary of Econet) fiber optic networks to serve remote areas beyond the reach of traditional solutions -- such as over bodies of water, through forests, national parks and post-conflict zones. It is hoped that the optical network could also help to plug coverage gaps of cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots.
There does need to be a constant flow of data between the links, so engineers place the terminals high above ground on poles, rooftops and towers. The technology has already undergone pilot testing in Kenya (and India) and will now roll out from existing Liquid Telecom (a subsidiary of Econet) fiber optic networks to serve remote areas beyond the reach of traditional solutions -- such as over bodies of water, through forests, national parks and post-conflict zones. It is hoped that the optical network could also help to plug coverage gaps of cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots.
Forest Mims III (Score:2)
In the 80's, Forest Mims published designs for lightwave transceivers in Getting Started in Electronics. This is an idea whose time has been a long time in coming.
While lightwave transmission is subject to more interference, it has the advantage of directional transmission, meaning that adjacent transmitters don't interfere with each other, as would be the case in radio. Unlike the omnidirectional (or nearly so) transmission of radio, multiple channels can share the same frequency and geographic locati
Re: (Score:1)
In the 2000's, free networking enthusiasts built a 10Mbit optical standard called RONJA. It used high brightness LED's and loupe lenses to achieve approx 1-2km links.
Re: (Score:2)
Signal dropped out in the morning if there was too much fog though.
Re: Forest Mims III (Score:2)
You don't have a narrow beam of light. At its basic form think Morris code signal lights that ships used to communicate to subs at night. You don't know where the sub is but it reads your code.
Fog and rain are a problem but stuff like birds flying through would just lower bandwidth.
As for bouncing off the atmosphere... that would be AM radio. Feasible but bandwidth issues.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Radio waves already bounce of the "atmosphere" - ever heard of shortwave radio? Because of the low frequencies involved, the data rate is modest (think early dial-up modems 110, 300, 1200, 9600 baud).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Forest Mims III (Score:2)
Yeah fog, rain, anything in the air and one of my college's buildings would lose most or all of our internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
there have been optical links for free air for a while, but nothing like that distance. most of the free-air products have been microwave, I was seeing those advertised in the 1980s.
Re: (Score:1)
What are the benefits of optical vs microwave links? Microwave links are well-proven technology, as shown in The Hummingbird Project [imdb.com] movie...
Re: (Score:1)
Higher data rate and need less power, as far as I know. A downside might be that better aiming is needed, e.g. if the terminal is mounted on a mast that sways. Also, I assume fog/rain can be an issue for an optical link. But this can also be an issue for a microwave link -- it depends on the frequencies.
I don't know any data rate for a ground based laser link, but the laser communication communication terminal in the satellite EDRS-C [1] can do 1.8 Gbit/s at a distance of 45 000 km.
[1] https://en.wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:1)
If you want an example of a longer distance, see the European Data Relay System (EDRS) [1]. It's for point-to-point communication between LEO satellites and a GEO satelite. Distance for the laser link is thus at least 35 000 km (GEO is at 36 000 km). Uses active tracking at least in the satellite that's in the GEO side, after having locked on to the LEO satellite. The satellite EDRS-C has been launched and I think it got into service this summer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Rain? Cloud cover? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Then you drop off the Google surveillance network.
Re: Rain? Cloud cover? (Score:3)
Well it stops working. Hence Kenya rather than Glasgow for the implementation...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If what we want to provide is access to documents and communications, store and forward tehnologies work well. Email, Usenet, and even various web proxies work well. If what we want to provide is live video traffic, it's not so effective. The One Laptop Per Child project had working "mesh" technologies, designed to support central stations that could bring requested data to a central repository and use "mesh" connections among the laptops to access the data over larger areas than typical wifi stations could
Should add this to Project Loon (Score:2)
Maybe with "lower" Blimps.
Light? 20km limit? That's not an improvement. (Score:4, Informative)
Ubiquiti makes antennas for wifi links at 100+ kilometers. How is a 20 kilometer "light beam" link any better? How is building out networks of "light towers" to access remote regions any more practical than just installing a Starlink terminal and some wifi hotspots?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It sounds like your proposed solution would involve a chain of jerry-rigged single points of failure, with every link in that chain costing several times more than the billionaire's solution will likely end up costing when they're in large scale production for retail service. The bandwidth throughput may be high for the chain of optical links, but it ultimately has to connect to something, and would require ongoing maintenance and upkeep spread over a great distance. Apart from a dislike of the bank balance
Re: (Score:1)
It sounds like your proposed solution would involve a chain of jerry-rigged single points of failure, with every link in that chain costing several times more than the billionaire's solution will likely end up costing when they're in large scale production for retail service. The bandwidth throughput may be high for the chain of optical links, but it ultimately has to connect to something, and would require ongoing maintenance and upkeep spread over a great distance. Apart from a dislike of the bank balance of the person bankrolling it, I think that a Starlink terminal that can be simply set out in a flat area and plugged into a power source anywhere on the planet is a much more practical and viable solution, even if the per-user bandwidth is only in the hundreds of megabits per second.
You can use the light being beamed at you as power as well. maybe this is PPoE light networking?
Re: (Score:1)
Really? Sub-Saharan Africa has a real problem dedicating a chunk of microwave spectrum to high-speed data networks?
Microwave towers stitched the United States together since the 1950s [wired.com] - I see no reason a similar network couldn't "light up" Africa..
Re:Light? 20km limit? That's not an improvement. (Score:4, Insightful)
How is a 20 kilometer "light beam" link any better?
* 20Gbps instead of tens of Mbps
* A tight beam, so nearby links won't interfere with each other
* Unlicensed spectrum
Also, you'll never see 100+ km except between mountaintops. Things on the ground interfere with radio waves even when you have a clear line of sight between towers.
Re: (Score:3)
Anything that would block a 5 GHz highly directional wireless signal would certainly block a laser. Ubiquiti's airFiber radios, which can be used in the 100km+ setup, and operate using unlicensed spectrum, do several gigabits per second, not tens of megabits per second.
Re: (Score:2)
Anything that would block a 5 GHz highly directional wireless signal would certainly block a laser.
Highly directional radio has a much wider beam than a laser. For instance, the airFiber 5 has a 6 degree beamwidth. That greatly increases the height of the required tower. Keep in mind you're already looking at 800 meter antenna towers just to get line of sight over the curvature of the earth. That's already crazy, but you have to clear several degrees below that. There are very few places you can do this.... mostly across mountaintops. Search "fresnel zone" for more info.
That said, the radios will w
Re: (Score:2)
Bandwidth, lack of interference, no regulatory issues.
Light can be modulated a lot faster than RF at the kinds of frequencies needed to get 20km links. RF interference is a constant problem everywhere, with line of sight light is largely immune. RF has limits on transmit power and the more sensitive your receiver the more interference it picks up, but invisible laser links are subject to much less regulation and can blast away at high power.
Re: (Score:2)
Bandwidth, lack of interference, no regulatory issues.
Interference from rain might not be a problem here, but interference from airborne sand might. Laser ethernet ain't new. It's also "up to 20 Gbps" which is code for "less than 20 Gbps" ... but how much less?
Re: (Score:2)
Rumor has it there are conditions under which light can penetrate water, perhaps they realized the problem and included it in their specifications?
Re: (Score:2)
Rumor has it there are conditions under which light can penetrate water, perhaps they realized the problem and included it in their specifications?
Atmospheric moisture is well-known to cause signal degradation in optical links. All frequencies of light are affected by water. Some more than others, it's true, but they explicitly said it's not visible light, and both UV and IR are highly attenuated.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm not sure how they'd deal with the risk of someone (or birds?) looking into the light if you use a bit of power... I do know that the ground-to-air missile systems Robot-70 and Robot-90 are guided by a laser that is strong enough to blind people. Not comparable though, different use cases.
Heh... I guess birds could disrupt the link, hadn't thought about that before.
Anyway, I think the lack of having to compete with others in the radio spectrum could be a really strong advantage.
Light beams and radio wave? (Score:2)
What is this, 1930?
And... "beams of light" and "radio waves" are the same thing, just different frequencies. /(sigh)
[ Don't get me started on microwave ovens. ]
Re: (Score:3)
While you describe them with the same equations, they are far from "the same" practically. But carry on with the shallow smart-ass comments.
Seems A Little Late..... (Score:2)
So Alphabet wants to re-create the old towers-and-microwave-dishes concept - only with lasers? Lasers either need a clear line of sight or an optical fiber conduit.
SpaceX, on the other hand, is already deploying StarLink; a thousand satellites already, with 20 times more planned. Satellites that, for the most part, won't be subject to terrorism that blows up buildings or knocks down towers, and much less affected by weather concerns.
Why not test it in the greatest country on earth? (Score:2)
I heard you have the not-so-greatest-internet coverage.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
We (The United States) have no issue with backhaul providers, it's struggles with the last mile that frustrate us, just as it will frustrate the builders of this new system - how to serve the folks that live beyond the reasonable range of buried wires, fiber optic cables, or cellular towers?
Or maybe we could just "scooch" everyone in Africa to all live on top of each other in their major cities, just like the Europeans and several Asian countries are?
Invisible beam of light .. (Score:1)
Does he mean an infra-red beam of light?
So like directional radio, but worse. (Score:2)
Higher speed at good weather at the cost of no speed at the slightest obstacle. (Like rain, fog, hell, even a wave of warmer or colder air acting as a redirecting lens.)
Amazing! You should join the 5G committee! ;)
5G protesters coming? (Score:2)
I wonder if the 5G protesters would get angry about this.
They usually complain about the high frequency of "5G radiation" - and well, visible light is around 100 000 times higher in frequency (and energy per photon).
Re: (Score:1)
Cool! (Score:2)
But given that it's coming from Google's parent, how long will it last before the installations are abandoned? After all, the company couldn't even get its shit together long enough to complete mostly-conventional fibre installations in the States - how likely are they stay the course with all-new tech on a different continent?
Innovation (Score:3)
An Alphabet X innovation lab project
FSO (Free Space Optical [wikipedia.org]) broadband has been a thing for a couple of decades. A company called Terabeam had offices a few miles from me. Now called Proxim Wireless, I have been entertained by watching that particular technology sector bought, sold, reorganized and descent through the OTC pink sheets down through penny stock status. So I'm a bit puzzled by the term 'innovation'.
In free space, nobody can hear your investors scream.