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Facebook Achieves 20Gbps Data Rate Over MMW Radio Spectrum (thestack.com)

Posted by msmash on from the impressive-feats dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook's Connectivity Lab has announced that it has achieved data transmission rates of 20Gbps over the millimetre-wave (MMW) section of the radio spectrum; however, the transceiving stations need to be incredibly tightly calibrated to each other, with the team describing the margin for error as equivalent to 'a baseball pitcher aiming for a strike zone the size of a quarter'.

61 comments

  1. Fantastic. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's fantastic they can violate your privacy even faster now.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    1. Re:Fantastic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean we can DDOS our neighbors LED light faster.

    2. Re:Fantastic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I hated it when they sent the team of commandos to my house to force me to create an account.

    3. Re:Fantastic. by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You think Facebook only collects information on people who create accounts?

      That's adorable.
      https://www.theguardian.com/te...

    4. Re:Fantastic. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I hated it when they sent the team of commandos to my house to force me to create an account.

      They sent people with guns to make you sign up? What part of Texas do you live in?

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    5. Re:Fantastic. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Ah, somebody doesn't know about AdBlocker, NoScript, and other tools to delete tracking cookies and anonymize your web access. Do try to keep up, k?

    6. Re:Fantastic. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2

      That helps, but Facebook also gets data from partners, some of which you may have accounts with. Facebook probably has more data on any individual in the US readily available than the FBI do.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    7. Re:Fantastic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apparently if you're enough of a sore loser it can lead to hallucinations and schizophrenia.

    8. Re:Fantastic. by Nunya666 · · Score: 1, Funny

      Under the Trump administration, this will likely happen. You'll be required, by federal law, to have and use, daily a Facebook account, using your real, legal name, and your State-ID approved picture of your face. Furthermore you'll be required to carry a GPS-enabled smartphone at all times, and have Facebook log your location in realtime. A voice recognition app will be required to be on your smartphone as well, and all conversations you have, 24/7/365, will be digitized, sifted, sorted, categorized, profiled, and stored for later analysis if any potential illegal activity is suspected by NSA alogrithms. Failure to comply will result in a $100,000 fine and 10 years in federal prison without the possibility of parole, after which you will be implanted with a GPS tracker, removal of which will result in your immediate death. All because you retarded primates voted for gods-be-damned Donald Trump. Thanks for ruining the country and the world, you fucking assholes.

      Well, I was going to upvote you as Funny, until I read those last 2 sentences.

      Too bad there isn't a "funny troll" option/choice.

    9. Re:Fantastic. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Ah, yes. I always forget that since I don't use my real name online anywhere I can manage to do so, and I'll avoid things that I have to log into as much as I can.

    10. Re: Fantastic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't confuse bandwidth with latency!

    11. Re:Fantastic. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2

      Do you give a false name and address when paying the utility bill? Ordering from Amazon?

      How does that work? Does someone called Phil McCrackin on 123 Main Street keep wondering how his bills keep getting paid?

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    12. Re:Fantastic. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 0

      Are you just seriously mocking me now? Or are you just being funny? I thought we were having an actual conversation here, if you're just mocking me like a typical troll would now then the conversation is over and you can just buzz off.

    13. Re: Fantastic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's being sarcastic, but his point is valid.
      Nowadays a lot of use cases exist where giving a fake identity will not work at best, or is liable to criminal prosecution at worst. Of course you can still choose not to buy online (giving up your real address), fill in your taxes on paper or pay everything in cash, but these methods will eventually disappear. One day you will find yourself living outside of society.

    14. Re:Fantastic. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

      That's a rather touchy response.

      I was answering jokingly but the point is valid. If you give your real name/address to anyone, even when paying bills, your data is being saved and quite likely shared with data collection services that will sell the data ultimately to companies like Facebook and Google.

      I too use false names online. I use ad blocking software. I have multiple e-mail accounts and sign up for different services with different names; however, I am under no illusion that I have much privacy. I'm aware that for all my best efforts, Facebook and google know a crapload about me. Here's a secret, they know all about you too!

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    15. Re:Fantastic. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Okay.. apologies for the knee-jerk response, but you have to understand how things are on the Internet, especially THIS week..

      I know exactly how much there is about my Real Identity in public records, and know there's not a gods-be-damned thing I can do about that.. but at the same time I'm never going to be one of those people who just throw up their hands and say "Nothing I can do about it! May as well give up!" -- which is what most people seem to do. That way lie dragons. You can claim Failbook 'knows' things about my Real Identity, but unless you can produce that information, I'll remain skeptical, and if utility companies and any bank I do business with is selling or even giving my information to 3rd parties without my express permission, then they're in big, big trouble.

    16. Re: Fantastic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude. They know more about me than I know about me. What really pisses me off, is that wont share with me.

  2. baseball pitcher.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why not try using a sport the "world" plays - a world series that is played by one country...

    1. Re:baseball pitcher.. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

      To be fair, as many people play baseball as snooker and snooker has a world championship too.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    2. Re:baseball pitcher.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or use standard units. What's the chance of the baseball pitcher hitting the side of a barn?

    3. Re: baseball pitcher.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's many more countries represented in the snooker wc than the baseball World Series though.

    4. Re:baseball pitcher.. by jittles · · Score: 1

      Why not try using a sport the "world" plays - a world series that is played by one country...

      Two countries participate in the World Series of Baseball, technically. Both Canada and the US have teams. But I would imagine that the best players in the world play in Major League Baseball, I think it's the highest paying league.

    5. Re:baseball pitcher.. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Don't worry: it's still an painfully useless analogy if you are familiar with baseball. You really aren't missing anything.

    6. Re: baseball pitcher.. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2, Funny

      In 2016 there were 6 countries represented. (and that's counting England, Scotland and Wales separately instead of under the banner of United Kingdom). There's only 2 countries represented by teams in the world series, but players come from 23 different countries.

      I'm actually not disagreeing with the notion that "the world series" is a bit of a laugh as a name, but it is represented by people from a lot of countries, and to be fair, no team from outside North America would be competitive.

        (there again there's probably more than 23 countries represented in the Premier League in England and we don't call it the World Premier League... yet).

      Another one that amuses me is the Kabaddi World Cup. They actually have a couple dozen countries competing, but considering only two countries in the world actually play the sport seriously (and most of the competitors in foreign teams are ex-pats or children of ex-pats from India) it's a bit of a laugh.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    7. Re:baseball pitcher.. by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      Could we have a bad car analogy instead, that might be more understandable.

    8. Re:baseball pitcher.. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

      Could we have a bad car analogy instead, that might be more understandable.

      The margin of error is smaller than the likelihood of actually getting a car to crank on the first try when being pursued by a serial killer.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    9. Re:baseball pitcher.. by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      oh yeah I see, a wifi system like that would be really stressful to operate

    10. Re:baseball pitcher.. by jdschulteis · · Score: 1

      Don't worry: it's still an painfully useless analogy if you are familiar with baseball. You really aren't missing anything.

      Major League Baseball (MLB) rule 2.04 specifies that " the distance between the pitcher’s plate and home base (the rear point of home plate) shall be 60 feet, 6 inches" (18.44 meters).

      MLB rule 3.01 specifies that the ball be "not less than nine nor more than 9 1/4 inches in circumference". That is 72.64–74.68 mm in diameter, let's split it down the middle and use 73.66 mm.

      The MLB definition of a strike includes "a legal pitch when so called by the umpire, which: [...] is not struck at, if any part of the ball passes through any part of the strike zone".

      A United States quarter is 24.26 mm in diameter.

      Thus, the difficulty of aligning the transceivers is similar to the difficulty of throwing a ball of 73.66 mm diameter through a hole of 97.88 mm diameter from a distance of 18.44 meters.

      There, now anyone in the world should have a good idea of how difficult it is. ;-)

  3. Can you see me now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How dependent is MMW on line-of-sight?

    1. Re:Can you see me now? by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 2

      If they were using a one-meter-plus parabolic antenna that had to be aimed to an accuracy of 0.07 degrees, and since they pointed out that this part of the spectrum is blocked by rain and fog, I'm going to say "totally". Millimeter-wave gets attenuated by just about anything. If the AC below is correct that there was a ridge in the way, then they must have been using really tall towers -- or, as hinted in the article, an airborne target.

    2. Re:Can you see me now? by poofmeisterp · · Score: 1

      If they were using a one-meter-plus parabolic antenna that had to be aimed to an accuracy of 0.07 degrees, and since they pointed out that this part of the spectrum is blocked by rain and fog, I'm going to say "totally". Millimeter-wave gets attenuated by just about anything. If the AC below is correct that there was a ridge in the way, then they must have been using really tall towers -- or, as hinted in the article, an airborne target.

      I can't begin to imagine the ERP needed for sustained propagation in that frequency range, even with the +1m parabolic! Yow. But hey. Fast.

    3. Re:Can you see me now? by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 2

      Still not as fast as an IR free-space link, and I'm struggling to see what other advantage it has. It's still blocked by atmospheric water or precipitation. It might be harder for a bird to block it by flying through the beam, but if you expand a laser beam's diameter to 1 m, no one bird's going to block that, either. And I can't imagine you'd need anywhere near 100 watts to get IR across that distance.

  4. Terrain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The article does not spell this out, but I lived in Woodland Hills so I know from looking at the map that the path between the receiver and transmitter is not even remotely line-of-sight. That's up over a very tall ridge and then back down onto the floor of the san fernando valley.

    1. Re:Terrain by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 2

      As I said up-thread, the part of the article that talked about a large parabolic reflector aimed within 0.07 degrees implies a very precise line-of-sight alignment. If it were possible to bounce this signal off an atmospheric layer or rely on backscatter, they wouldn't need that kind of accuracy. From looking at the terrain on Google, I don't think towers would do the trick -- I'll bet that they had the transmitter and receiver set up on peaks near Malibu and Woodland Hills, high enough to see each other.

      That's an impressive distance for that part of the spectrum. I still think of mm-wave as a local or very-short-haul medium. If you're doing line-of-sight with that kind of precision required, why not go straight to IR laser?

    2. Re:Terrain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they did, then the map in the article is way, way, way off. I don't think Woodland Hills proper even technically reaches to the top of the ridge. Google Maps doesn't seem think so.

  5. Baseball? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck you. Baseball metaphors? What is that in terms of aiming a car at the library of congress?

    1. Re:Baseball? by dgatwood · · Score: 2

      It's like aiming a car at the library of Congress and hitting only books by Ayn Rand.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  6. Calibration is not a big deal by davidwr · · Score: 1

    margin for error as equivalent to 'a baseball pitcher aiming for a strike zone the size of a quarter'.

    For fixed-point unobstructed line-of-sight this isn't so difficult, especially if you use lasers to do your initial calibration.

    The problems happen if you have obstructions (trees, rain) or movement (buildings move in the wind, so top-of-skyscraper to top-of-skyscraper would be hard to maintain). But for indoor use or near-ground-level use for tens or hundreds of meters, this might work. If you have a way of keeping calibration despite movement, these limits may be relaxed.

    I can see this as a possible way to connect one end of a long factory to the other end without having to run wires. This assumes the places where you put the transmit- and receive antennas isn't subject to vibrations from the factory, of course.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:Calibration is not a big deal by BuckaBooBob · · Score: 2

      It would be easier and less trouble to just run a fiber that short distance and ta-da... trouble free communication without interference and easier to reach higher speeds without worry of eavesdropping..

      --
      Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
  7. Hey idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ever hear of electronically steerable antennas? Another technology brought to you by military research, now going to be used by software weenies...

    1. Re:Hey idiots by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 1

      Please tell us more, O Expert AC, about the circuitry you use to generate an array of phase-controlled mm-wave signals.

    2. Re:Hey idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First google hit for "electronically steerable antennas", O Stupid Space Nutter Who Can't Google:

      https://ewh.ieee.org/r6/phoenix/wad/Handouts/WAD_9.18.09.pdf

      From wiki:

      " In 2007, DARPA researchers announced a 16 element phased array radar antenna which was also integrated with all the necessary circuits on a single silicon chip and operated at 30–50 GHz.[5]"

      Etc etc etc

      Please continue exposing your astounding depth of ignorance.

    3. Re:Hey idiots by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 1

      Ah, QA, I didn't recognize you without the space/3D-printing hat. Tell me, do you maintain a list of everyone who's ever criticized one of your posts? Because, while I get tired of your shtick pretty frequently, I don't think I've posted in response to you (or anyone else) that frequently.

      In any event, the presentation you linked does show considerably better technology than I was aware of. (For anyone who couldn't already tell, no, this isn't my field.) And yet -- look at the performance graphs scattered throughout the deck. They seem to show a pretty messy 5-15db lobe being steered. Compare that to 50+db gain of a 1-meter parabolic antenna at 50GHz. Facebook is pushing 100W through that transmitter (although admittedly there's no indication how much of that makes it to the radiator). How do you suppose the steerable array system would fare if you fed it a megawatt?

      (BTW, snark aside, if you are an antenna engineer, I'd love to see some actual analysis around this.)

    4. Re:Hey idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I merely maintain a list of pablum-brained sci-fi enthusiasts with no grasp on reality.

      So, how many years has it been since I've been banned from Fark? Seen any 3D printed cars? Are you any closer to living on Mars?

      Well?

  8. Of course by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's well understood that compression efficiency is inversely correlated with the amount of information contained in the data string. Since we're talking about Facebook, the information content is basically nil.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  9. So how real world realistic is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When I read stuff like this, it looks like a realistic numbers could easily be cut in half. I look at any wireless solution as simply degrading much more than is shown on paper or in tests. We all know the false advertising of wireless speed today in routers, and devices.

  10. In a Datacenter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now, how fast they could go within a datacenter? It would also be a nice way to save money in linking building complexes located in difficult areas.

  11. Missing data by poofmeisterp · · Score: 2

    Conveniently, they left out the effective radiated power (ERP) needed to get microwave radiation in the 30-300GHz range to a receiving point at the distance mentioned in the article of 13km.

    1. Re:Missing data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They mention a 4 ft antenna aperture which can derive gain. However, I see commercial Power amplifiers at about 1/2 Watt. The article claims a 10 dB gain on top of commercial amplifiers from what seems like using multiple smaller amplifiers combined with splitters. I would guess that they are getting 10 dB more EIRP due to power.

      The interesting thing is that they want to put this on a UAV. Why would a UAV need a 20 Gbps comm link?

      Overall, they are going to have to replace the 4 ft antenna with a patch array antenna in order to fly it. They are going to lose a lot of antenna gain there that they aren't able to make up for with more output power. I don't see this being feasible for long distances on a UAV but a few km should be manageable.

  12. Yeah, but good part about RF by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    You don't have to worry about the wind drift. The Pringles can is able to squeeze the signal real tight.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  13. In Other News by avandesande · · Score: 1

    Ford claims making breakthrough in petroleum refining processes

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
    1. Re:In Other News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fool! Petroleum is obsolete and radio waves are obsolete. Ford should be researching nothing but electric cars, and Facebook should be researching nothing but fiber. Because the FUTURE is FIBER.

  14. It's the size of two football fields by castus · · Score: 1

    'a baseball pitcher aiming for a strike zone the size of a quarter'

    These comparison are really useful when have never seen a baseball field and only have an extremely vague idea of how far a pitcher is standing from the strike zone.

    To be honest, I don't actually know how big an olympic-sized swimming pool is either

    1. Re:It's the size of two football fields by bmxeroh · · Score: 1

      What do you mean? It's in the name; it's Olympic-sized. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/olympic-sized

      --
      Central Ohio Home Theater Installation - The Theater People
  15. Should that not be by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    1/32" radio or some other absurd imperial unit?

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  16. It's not impossible by geekprime · · Score: 1

    heck it's easy if the "pitcher" is a computer controlled servo system that keeps the beam on point.

  17. A more American simile please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    as equivalent to 'a baseball pitcher aiming for a strike zone the size of a quarter'.

    I don't think that's American enough. Can we get it in terms of Statue of Liberties per acre of Freedom?

  18. Castro Peak? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The actual FB post (not the one on thestack) says mountain top. I'm going to guess Castro Peak where there are a lot of commercial radio facilities and a road to the top. And Castro Peak is in Malibu.