Slashdot Mirror
Military Laser/Radio Tech Proposed As Alternative To Laying Costly Fiber Cable
An anonymous reader writes "Californian comm-tech company Aoptix is testing new laser+radio hybrid communications technology with three major U.S. internet carriers. The equipment required can be bolted onto existing infrastructure, such as cell-tower masts, and can communicate a 2gbps stream over 6.5 miles. The system was developed over 10 years at a cost of $100 million in conjunction with the Air Force Research Laboratory, and the military implementation of it is called Aoptix Enhanced Air Ground Lasercom System (EAGLS). The laser component of the technology uses a deformable mirror to correct for atmospheric distortion over the mast-hop, in real-time. The laser part of the system is backed-up by a redundant radio transmitter. The radio component has low attenuation in rainy conditions with large refracting raindrops, while the laser is more vulnerable to dense fog. The system, which features auto-stabilization to compensate for cell-tower movement and is being proposed as an alternative to the tremendous cost p/m of laying fiber cable, is being tested in Mexico and Nigeria in addition to the three ISP trials.
And certainly easier to tap. I hear that fiber optic is a bitch..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The OP says that "The radio component has * low attenuation* in rainy conditions with large refracting raindrops". I think they mean "high attentuation". TFA says that radio is disrupted by rain.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I don't understand why this is the trend even with the military to avoid laying fibre infrastructure. Looking at that site citing the costs of previous installs and listing the lifetime of the fibre as "20 Years" fibre is a 100 year infrastructure and even if your military base moves or you get a new technology that fibre in the ground will still be there and still be valuable.
45+ years ago when I was a kid and before cellphone towers dotted the landscape there were these funnel shaped microwave repeating towers everywhere that carried long distance phone traffic across the country without wires.
Letter To Iran
But it sounds inferior in many respects. Lasers require line of sight, which is obviously a problem. We really ought to be investing in quality infrastructure.
Most property already has utility easements unless they're very rural, even then it's simple enough to seize with Imminent Domain for "the greater good"
Is the domain about the happen any time now?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
A few university set-ups in Germany tried this, (e.g. Hamburg), albeit probably with far simpler specifications as it was some years ago. They had surprisingly frequent problems with birds; birds perching on the towers, birds flying between the source/sink, uzw. Packet loss got enough at one point to contact a local falconer to see if his bird of prey could scare them away. It turned out that the local bakery was too much of a draw. There was whimsical talk of adding a TCP/IP error for bakery janitorial events. I believe they eventually just went with fiber pulled through the sewers ..ja-da
This seems kinda familiar. Kinda like a project I read about over a decade ago. They just added adaptive optics and a radio link for automation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Sure I suppose it's good enough for a single user, but I think it'll be a bit more expensive to add these in rather than run a set of fiber cables down the road.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
...aren't interested in quality infrastructure; they're interested in keeping new players out of the markets they currently "serve", continuing to collect rents from the areas they currently "serve", and keeping the FCC impotent and unable to regulate common carriers of internet traffic.
The benefit of these devices is that they also can help alleviate a good portion the back-haul fiber necessary. I am assuming that this tech is highly similar to what Google and Elon Musk are looking to accomplish. The red tape of entrenched monopolies makes it easier to move the backbone into LEO (Low Earth Orbit). These towers can last mile without needing local fiber to a POP. Somehow it is cheaper to build a global network of satellites/drones than it is to run fiber. That is the extent of the power of the ISP's/telcos in the US.
similar-performing stuff has been available for decades:
free-space optical:
http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/professional/canobeam_dt_150_hd#Specifications
competitors: fsona.com, lightpointe.com, mrvfso.com, laserbit, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA
integrated multipoint "urban mesh" systems (defunct): airfiber optimesh
license-free oxygen-spectrum radio:
https://www.tessco.com/products/displayProductInfo.do?sku=341472&eventGroup=4&eventPage=1
http://www.meridianmicrowave.com/unlicensed-free_wireless_wans_60ghz.html
https://wikidevi.com/wiki/List_of_802.11ad_Hardware
for longer links you can use licensed radios at 80GHz, or down to 20GHz.
In general I think FSO is only interesting for a low-reliability link where during fog you give up, or a really short link like across a street which will work in most fog. Otherwise you need a 20 - 80GHz backup radio during fog, so why not use that radio all the time? There's no point to spending the extra money on the FSO. If they could increase the speed per link 100-fold (which is possible in single-mode fiber), then it might become interesting again, but as I've said it's a very old industry, and they haven't.
How about air fiber? 1,4Gpbs and 13+ km
http://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber24
"Can I build around 50 miles of Tehachapi mountains?"
1 reason, adverse weather.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Hearing about lasers and raindrops puts me in mind of this recent XKCD What-If posting.
The same goes for any new parking garages that may happen to get built.
XDInd
Why can't Fiber be run along telephone poles, same as power or cable? Fiber is always tagged as expense, but I don't see why it's any different than any other wire that's run to your house. You can combine hundreds or thousands of thin fiber strands into a thicker line that will still fit on a pole.
Terabeam Networks, c. 1999. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabeam
And they weren't the first.
Multiple technologies are used by mobile comm units in the military. Setting up the Satellite downlink on one side of the cantonment area and using a laser link to transmit to the ops area sure beats laying fragile cable.
Or satellite downlink at a single area and using this to distribute to multiple fire bases. Definitely a win.
"I get my Internet from SharkNet[TM]. It works better during rain and tornadoes."
Table-ized A.I.
You missed the "increase power" and "repeat as necessary" steps.
You might want to look up what "line of sight" means.
Suppose I point a laser in your direction and you are trying to detect that laser. We're five miles apart. Will you be able to spot that laser on a clear night? Probably not, because there is probably some other building between you and me. Or a tree. Or a hill.
Go outside and look five miles due west. In all probability you can't, you can only see as far as your neighbor's front door. No amount of error correction is going to fix the fact that there's a friggin house in the way. That's line of sight.
Suppose we go out to the Bonneville Salt Flats, where there are no buildings, trees, or hills. You hold a laser and shine it toward me, five miles away. Can I see it? Nope, even with no building, trees or hills, the curvature of the earth is in the way. Line of sight is one mean bitch.
Is it too much to ask to get sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads?
In most places, local politicians have granted exclusive right-of-way access to donors^H^H^H^H^H%H public-minded businesses, like Comcast.
In many cities, power and cable run underground because poles are "ugly". That's a bit more expensive to do, even if the local politicians allow it.
This reminds me of a DARPA project from a while back that sounds very similiar: The ORCLE program. I wonder if this is an outgrowth from the DARPA funded work.
http://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/
Already commercial products available that do not require licenses.
If you want to avoid interference with 5GHz band just go for the 24GHz versions...but on the downside they only guarantee 8miles..
And according to users they have seen it work good during heavy snow..
The idea behind the "increase power" and "repeat as necessary" parts was that if you increase power *enough*, you'll end up with line-of-sight, even if you didn't have it to start with. (i.e.: You'll burn a hole through any intervening materials.)
Do they pay you to defend their bullshit? There are MANY monopolies and you know it. You can call them franchises as much as you want but you nor I could get us one of those franchises regardless of how much we bribed the council. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and shits on your property like a duck, then it's commo company of some sorts and the only one in your area.
So it involves lasers and special mirrors, and lots of data, next you'll tell me some real genius figured out a way to make it pop popcorn too.
Nearly every property with access to a road has a utility easement, which means what you and your neighbors think about a fiber trench means exactly jack shit. That and fiber is only buried 2-3 feet in most locations, which means "insanely expensive" is more hyperbole than fact.
Buried fiber runs are clocking in at less than $10 per foot in a lot of locations these days, which is plenty cost-effective.
The year 2004 just called and they want their 100 million back!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Sacramento has railroaded through plenty of imminent domain requests and other dumb construction projects in the 30 years I've been here. The most notable boneheaded one is bulldozing the K Street Mall to replace it with a new Kings Stadium smack dab in the middle of Downtown Sacramento.
So YMMVbA.
If it was for base connectivity I would be very surprised if fiber wasn't laid. I am more likely to believe the military use for this was designed for something which can be setup quickly in forward operating locations. Fiber takes time and substantially more infrastructure to install. Theoretically this could be run off a steerable pop-up mast which could be setup in minutes.
Fiber can also be cut.
one shiny mylar balloon to block the signal.....
Why can I only get internet from Time Warner?