Unfortunately, these enterprises suffered the same fate as so many others when the photonics boom-driven as it was at the time by the single application of long-haul telecom-entered a deep slumber after capacity needs had been met for the foreseeable future by the laying of “dark fiber” for eventual provisioning.
The first commercial attempts at terrestrial free-space optical communications were attempted in the late-1990s photonics boom, driven by innovators like Terabeam, Optical Crossing, AirFiber, and Lucent’s OpticAir. Importantly, these direct interconnects avoid the crowded-spectrum issue that impedes advancing applications of broadcast approaches, along with vexing regulatory strictures and delays.īack home on earth, a related approach to provisioning point-to-point networking using “fiberless photonics” is being rebooted. These also leverage laser-based interconnect approaches. Sub-orbital approaches to blanketing the Earth with bandwidth have been mounted by Google’s balloon-borne Project Loon 5, Facebook’s canceled drone-based Project Aquila. Other players include Amazon, Momentus, Fraunhofer IOF, Arribada Initiative, Outernet, and Lacuna Space. The complicated link topology has been reduced to a YouTube video 3 and interested readers will find many resources for exploring the approach available on social media 4. Among the leaders in the field is SpaceX, and the first test launches of its laser-equipped satellites occurred recently, with founder Elon Musk verifying on social media that these launches of 142 satellites in a single payload included their first implementation of the company’s inter-satellite laser links 1 2. The inter-satellite links are via gossamer laser beams, with each satellite tracking and linking to its neighbors. In addition, they offer higher security, since the optical signal is highly focused, cannot be eaves-dropped on easily, and the straightforward propagation reduces the risk of interference, a phenomenon very common in the radio frequency range. Not only do they provide higher throughput, but they also require less power (satellites have no access to the grid). The vision is to provide every car, every piece of physical infrastructure, every shipping container and tractor-trailer rig, even every cow with connectivity to enable a spectrum of fantastical applications.įree Space Optical vs Radio Frequency (RF) Communicationĭue to the limited bandwidth, as well as RF signals’ lack of precise focusability, laser beam-based optical communications have been developed to complement traditional satellite communications. They link not only to ground stations but to each other, promising to route data efficiently and rapidly from any point on the planet to any other. These nodes are compact satellites, deployed by the thousands to girdle the entire planet.
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Today, we are seeing the first glimmers of a phenomenon that, in a sense, brings Earth’s global communications infrastructure full circle: the implementation of a vast space-based network of new-generation communication nodes. This was truly a key enabler for the deployment of the Internet: the photonics-based physical spiderweb that-among so many other things-underlies and implements the World Wide Web that brings this article to you. Optical cabling girdling the planet quickly replaced these fragile and problematic links with the capacious and speedy global network we enjoy today.
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