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CSIRO Develops 10 Gbps Microwave Backhaul

theweatherelectric writes "James Hutchinson of iTnews writes, 'CSIRO has begun talks with global manufacturers to commercialise microwave technology it says can provide at least 10 Gbps symmetric backhaul services to mobile towers. The project, funded out of the Science and Industry Endowment Fund and a year in planning, could provide a ten-fold increase in the speed of point-to-point microwave transmission systems within two years, according to project manager, Dr Jay Guo. Microwave transmission is used to link mobile towers back to a carrier's network where it is physically difficult or economically unviable to run fibre to the tower. Where current technology has an upper limit of a gigabit per second to multiple towers over backhaul, the government organisation said it could provide the 10 Gbps symmetric speeds over ranges of up to 50 kilometres.'"

29 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Damn patent trolls by kestasjk · · Score: 5, Funny

    These guys need hire some scientists instead of lawyers.. It's called innovation guys!

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  2. See? CSIRO is no troll by ignavus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    See? The CSIRO engages in actual research, and patents its own work, and licences its own patented work to others.

    It doesn't go around buying up patents from other companies with the aim of litigation.

    The result of non-Australians paying for the use of CSIRO patents will be further research by CSIRO that could improve technology for the rest of the world - not just for Australians. If patents are to exist at all, this is how it should work.

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    I am anarch of all I survey.
    1. Re:See? CSIRO is no troll by LordLucless · · Score: 5, Insightful

      then patenting it and charging those same citizens to use what they paid to invent.

      Or, in this case, charging billion-dollar companies incorporated in another country. Australian taxes should fund research for American companies - that way the tax-payers are sure to get their money's worth!

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
    2. Re:See? CSIRO is no troll by TENTH+SHOW+JAM · · Score: 4, Informative

      I can't stand the idea of government taking someones money under threat of force

      Pay tax much? Governments get to charge taxes because they have standing armies. This has been the way since the dawn of city states and will not change because you don't like it.

      --
      A sig is placed here
      To display how futile
      English Haiku is
    3. Re:See? CSIRO is no troll by chrb · · Score: 4, Informative
    4. Re:See? CSIRO is no troll by The+Evil+Atheist · · Score: 2

      I can't stand the idea of government taking someones money under threat of force

      I can't stand the idea that a person believes they can reap all the rewards of a functioning society without giving something back to maintain it at a reasonable standard. In effect, these people are using force to leech of everyone else's contribution to society.

      --
      Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
    5. Re:See? CSIRO is no troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why should Australians pay for wireless research just so foreign multi-billion dollar organisations can use it for free?

    6. Re:See? CSIRO is no troll by dbIII · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Can you imagine a world where the US government patented everything they caused to be invented?

      It's really astonishing how out of touch some people are. I really don't know how you managed to avoid the PR that Universities push out about the new technologies they have patented.

  3. Cost? by aquarajustin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ubiquiti just announced their AirFiber product (http://www.ubnt.com/airfiber) which can get 1.4 Gbps symmetric at 13km. It'll be interesting to see the price point of this 10 Gbps system, as Ubiquiti's runs only $3k per endpoint. I was considering getting a pair of the Ubiquitis to connect a branch office to HQ.

    10 Gbps would be nice, but I'm guessing the cost of this system would be at least a magnitude greater than the AirFibers.

    1. Re:Cost? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Two links will be fine on the same tower. The beamwidth is very narrow at 24GHz and the radios are GPS synched.

      http://forum.ubnt.com/showthread.php?t=50005

    2. Re:Cost? by tragedy · · Score: 2

      But if you actually follow the url he provided (shame on him for not making it a link :)), they have a pre-order page where they're offering it for $2,995.00 (although with "Final tax and shipping costs to determined upon fulfillment."). It also says that "Each order contains two radio units." I'm a little unclear on whether that means that each order contains both endpoints or just that there are two "radio units" (send and receive?) in each endpoint.

    3. Re:Cost? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's actually 700 Mbps symmetric, and that is achievable at about 1.5 miles (Direct from the engineers mouthes at the release conference). 24gHz is also prone to "rain fade". This will be a great product but make sure you read through all the marketing BS. As a note Ubiquity is in the market to have "Disruptive Pricing". Most other vendors are selling PtP links at the same speed for closer to $13K - $25K.

  4. CSIRO != NPE by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    They did hire the scientists. Then they hired the lawyers to defend their exclusive rights in what the scientists developed. CSIRO is not an NPE any more than ARM or any other R&D company is.

    1. Re:CSIRO != NPE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm pretty sure that's a whoosh.

      The GP would have to not read the title, let alone the summary, to honestly think what he said.

    2. Re:CSIRO != NPE by FrootLoops · · Score: 2

      To be fair, using italics is never an indication of sarcasm on the internet. Neither are exclamation points! Or @!*%ing inappropriate expletives!1

      1's are a dead give-away though.

  5. Good work by the Australians by shione · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now they can implement this into the NBN and allow those that can only have wireless access and not cable have this.Actually at this speed it could exceed the cable part of the NBN.

    1. Re:Good work by the Australians by duk242 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nope, the Fibre is capable of speeds greater than 10gbit, just the tech on either end isn't at that spec for the runs to the houses (as it's currently unnecessary).

    2. Re:Good work by the Australians by aristedes · · Score: 2

      No. Point to point microwave technology is not helpful to get connectivity out to lots of people. The dishes need to be perfectly aligned to each other since the signal is deliberately kept within a very narrow beam. Microwave doesn't bounce off things like the lower frequencies used for wifi.

    3. Re:Good work by the Australians by TuringCheck · · Score: 2

      No. Point to point microwave technology is not helpful to get connectivity out to lots of people. The dishes need to be perfectly aligned to each other since the signal is deliberately kept within a very narrow beam. Microwave doesn't bounce off things like the lower frequencies used for wifi.

      Alignment of dishes is also needed to preserve a good signal / noise ratio needed by high efficiency modulation. The alternative would be to increase the transmitter power a lot with the downside of leaking interference all around.

      I assume special antenna construction is part of this high-speed technology too.

  6. Subtle but important addition ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    A vital point not explicitly highlighted in the summary - the Science and Industry Endowment Fund providing some of the funding for this work was the main beneficiary of last year's settlement around CSIRO's wireless patent.

    That is, the settlement money is being directly reinvested in new research to further develop wireless technologies, as well as public good research in other fields.

  7. And yet, somehow, by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

    ... the usage caps will not increase.

  8. Precipitation by jamesl · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Microwave transmission is/can be blocked/degraded by precipitation which is not a good thing. If this is a problem with this technology it will likely be implemented in only the most extreme locations -- where laying cable is very very expensive and utilization will be light.

  9. Re:csiro? new tech? by Antarius · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ultrasound Scanners (as used by pregnant women everywhere)
    Solar hot water
    A4 DSP chip
    Aerogard, insect repellent
    Atomic absorption spectroscopy
    Distance measuring equipment (DME) used for aviation navigation
    Gene shears
    Extended Wear Contact Lenses
    Interscan Microwave landing system, a microwave approach and landing system for aircraft
    Use of myxomatosis and calicivirus to control rabbit numbers
    Parkes Radio Telescope
    The permanent pleat for fabrics
    Polymer (plastic) banknotes, or "funny money"
    Relenza flu drug
    'Softly' woolens detergent
    X-ray phase contrast imaging
    Buffalo fly trap
    EXELGRAM (optical anti-counterfeiting technology)
    RAFT (Reversible Addition-Fragmentation chain Transfer) Polymerisation
    The Mills Cross radiotelescope design
    Supercapacitors
    24 hour tests for Tuberculosis in animals and humans


    It was also the CSIRO's Parkes Radio Telescope that beamed the Moon Landing.

    CSIRO isn't a patent troll, they're a government owned R&D organisation. They get money from inventions, but who doesn't? Patent trolls come up with (obvious) ideas and never make it work. CSIRO actually patents completed inventions.

    Some more achievements for you.

  10. CSIRO are now trolls. by kramulous · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No. CSIRO are trolls.

    I've been meeting them for quite some years now and the CSIRO guys I've met are about protectionism. Since they lost their .edu status, they are about turning a buck. They will lie, cheat and steal their way through any bit of technology and pawn it off as their own. They may once have had skill but those days have gone.

    The CSIRO are pretending to be elite. They plant themselves into the University system and pinch any idea that has the smallest amount of creativity. They will take established conferences and hijack them as their own. I bet you they had meetings about the recent attention of the WIFI thing and thought about how they can try and keep the momentum going. You wouldn't believe the extent they will advertise because they know that this is how you attract research and development money in Australia. Glossy mags and smiling pictures with MPs and popular projects as backdrops are taking research dollars from .edu and into putting it into .com. I wouldn't mind so much except they never deliver on more than 90% of projects. Just Word documents.

    Sure, there may be a couple of greybeards that still create, but none of the new guys do. But when the chief scientist, ceo type, publicly states that the future of energy is fossil fuels and not renewable energies, something is very, very wrong. That was until it was popular to be green.

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    1. Re:CSIRO are now trolls. by The+Evil+Atheist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I wouldn't mind so much except they never deliver on more than 90% of projects.

      That's why it's called science and research you retard. If you have a way of knowing which scientific study or development project based on new studies will be successful beforehand, please enlighten us, because we would like to bypass all that theorizing stuff and just plug numbers in formulae.

      --
      Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
  11. Re:csiro? new tech? by kestasjk · · Score: 2

    "Go read their patents." So you have nothing.

    I think you might have a point. Just look at how vague and unspecific that diagram is.. Everyone was doing wireless LANs in 1993 after all, these guys are hopeless.

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  12. Re:Perhaps I'm just dumb by dean.collins · · Score: 2

    yeh....your the only person who looked it up, pretty common term. lol dont feel bad, probably plenty of terms you know that others dont.

  13. Re:csiro? new tech? by LWATCDR · · Score: 2

    Funny but it all looks like basic research or things with military applications. Sort of like what the NACA did in the US from 1920 that and a lot of basic medical research.
    You know I am a republican and so was my mother and father. Thing is that even a conservative fellow like myself can see the benefit looking back at history that things like this gave the US. The problem is that back in the day people thought hey corporations where getting the fruits of government research for free so why not let them pay for the research. Well the problem is that the system we have now is that government still often pays for the research but now instead of results being in the public domain so any company no matter how big or small can use them some mega corp ends up with rights.
    Imagine how bad the US might have done in WWII if Grumman couldn't have used the NACA cowling on the Wildcat, Hellcat, and Avenger because Boeing had the rights to it. Or if North American couldn't use the NACA low drag airfoil that gave it such high speed and long range because Curtiss had the rights to it? Sorry but I feel you are just repeating the party line without thinking about it. Now a government body sell the the tech instead of just releasing it to any company in the nation for use is interesting. I thing that it being available to everyone free is a better solution but I am not an Australian so what I thing doesn't really matter in this case.

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  14. Re:csiro? new tech? by grainofsand · · Score: 3, Informative

    You say "socialism" as though it is a bad thing.

    Many many countries that are not the USA don't agree.

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    A dream is good. A plan is better.