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A High-Bandwidth Interplanetary Connection
sciencehabit writes "A new study suggests that by twisting laser light, scientists could pack enough information into interplanetary beams to speed up extraterrestrial communications to the multi-gigabit level. The pulses would be passed through a hologram or multimode optical fiber, which twists the light. On the other side, a telescope would focus the light and a second hologram, or fiber would decode the signal. That could allow much more data-rich communication between, say, Earth and probes on Mars, the researchers say. Closer to home, the approach could provide Internet links of 100 gigabits per second."
> Hemmati and his colleagues estimate that receiving OAM data from a transmitter as distant as the sun would require a kilometer-wide telescope.
Sounds like even someplace closer like Mars is going to take an impractically large receiver.
--- Mercutio was right.
We need faster speeds here down on earth before we think of these "multi gigabit" speeds for interplanetary communications..
Nothing here... So... SHOOO!!!
They're going to have to do something about the terrible ping times. Its orbit is about 1.5AU, so when it's close to the Earth, the round-trip ping time will be about 8 minutes. When it's on the opposite side of the sun, it'll be about 40 minutes.
The farthest away people are is in LEO (the ISS) So why do we need to develop faster links to other planets.
While this seems simple enough, maintaining a laser oriented at Mars while each planet rotates on its own axis and around the sun would made this impractical unless there were multiple transmitters/receivers at each location/node along with a terrestrial network to interconnect them.
As seen on slashdot good old Ethernet is still alive. Cat5 would do thejob, but you need to give it some slag to allow for distance variations.
There is as yet no interplanetary communication by Laser. It's all done by radio at present. The first flight demonstration of Laser communication will be on the LADEE Lunar Orbiter. That's scheduled to be launched in 2012. I am sure that optical communications will eventually be used, though. Using reasonably sized telescopes, gigabit per second communication across interplanetary distances should be possible using conventional techniques, even if OAM is not actually practical. (Of course, the weather would be an issue, as laser signals can't go through clouds.)
Given that more or less the same thing could have been and was said about deep space optical communications in the mid-1980's, all I can say is that it sure is taking a long time to implement it.
Closer to home, the approach could provide Internet links of 100 gigabits per second
Throttled down by your ISP to 24 megabits per second
Summation 2
They'll be able to stay occupied downloading music and porn quicker.
Should give limitless bandwidth.
Latency of course is the factor here.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
That's great, but the roaming charges will kill you.
Ping times would be horrible in a TF2 game of Mars vs Earth.
It's the latency that's the real killer.
If you want to just talk bandwidth... which is how much data can be sent from one location to another within a unit of time, then the bandwidth of a cargo van hauling a truckload of flash ram sticks across the country has, by many orders of magnitude, a higher bandwidth than any sort of technology that is built on electronic communication infrastructure.
When it becomes possible to, from earth, ping an orbiter around mars in under a second... *THEN* we will have really done something (okay... we may have violated a few physical laws to accomplish it, but hey... we can't let _that- stand in the way of technological progress, right?)
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
100 gigabit connections will open up the vast unexplored market for molecular biology porn!
On a 15 inch monitor, you'd be able to fit enough pixels to make out ribosomes and cell walls, not to mention viruses and bacteria.
Pervs all over the world would devote entire discussion forums to their favorite STDs in porn stars.
They'll just cap it anyway. :( I wish i was joking.
Isn't the limiting factor for current bandwidth power rather than speed anyways? My understanding they've long had the technology for much high bandwidth but the limitations are always power demands.
Secondary to power is usability. There's a big difference between pointing an antenna in the general direction of home and precisely aiming a laser million of miles away. Several orders of magnitude more accuracy is required.
Personally I don't find anything practical about this project. At least not today.
if they are trying to send us a new video of their greatest pop star, how will we be able to download it in a reasonable amount of time?
Most residential customers are cheap, and satisfied with a few megabits per second for their web browsing, and watching Youtube videos. Would they pay for much more speed than they currently need?
As for Mars, a multigigabit connection could allow for lots of Mars pictures for scientific studies. Telepresence would be very helpful on Mars. Put the money down for Mars.
Interplanetary IRDA is just as dumb and useless as it is here for the exact same reasons
And have your server be down loadable to remote nodes so you can accept input from users on mars. Maybe design it so that your cloud server can have a few nodes on mars and out in the asteroids. Then stream updates back and forth between cloud nodes using interplanetary IP.
Sounds like inter-planetary multi-player Quake is still out of reach.
Rather than actually doing it, couldn't we just auction the interstellar bandwidth to Google, Verizon, ATT, Sprint, etc.? Then we'd close the federal deficit! Centuries from now, they'd make the money back on roaming charges. We've been passing the buck to our kids, time to exploit the great-great-great-grandkids.
Gently reply
Missing citation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_auction
Gently reply
OK, maybe bandwidth is an issue but latency is still a bear.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Obviously, this doesn't "solve" the latency issue, but the concept does help bandwidth. Also, it doesn't replace RF links, but merely would relegate them to the failover for the IPN version of the BGP.
Luke, help me take this mask off
See also: http://www.cis.udel.edu/~mills/ipin.html