Facebook is building a high-speed communication environment for urban & suburban areas such as "Terragraph" ultra high-speed mobile network of 60 GHz

Since Facebook's business model is a structure that people around the world use revenue by using SNS, creating an environment where people around the world can use the Internet can be an effective up-front investment to expand business. In order to enable everyone to use high-speed internet communication, Facebook is a 60 GHz node type mobile communication system for urban area "Terragraph"Multiple antenna type MIMO communication system for suburbs where the Internet infrastructure is not established"Project ARIES"Has been announced.

Introducing Facebook's new terrestrial connectivity systems - Terragraph and Project ARIES | Engineering Blog | Facebook Code
https://code.facebook.com/posts/1072680049445290/introducing-facebook-s-new-terrestrial-connectivity-systems-terragraph-and-project-aries/

According to Facebook, it is said that at present, the optical fiber of the high-speed communication service which is becoming the mainstream is not realistic because building infrastructure at high speed everywhere in the world is too expensive to develop infrastructure such as cost and time about. Therefore, Facebook Communications Research Laboratory Connectivity Lab announced two kinds of wireless communication projects: "Terragraph" for urban areas and "Project ARIES" for suburbs.

◆ Terragraph
Terragraph is a wireless communication in the 60 GHz band which is a much higher frequency wireless than the generally popular 2.4 GHz band and 5 GHz band "WiGig"Is used. It is aimed to provide super high speed mobile circuits to populated cities by using WiGig, which is expected to enable high speed communication of up to 7 Gbps by millimeter waves.

This is a dedicated antenna for Terragraph. Each antenna is planned to be installed in the town structure such as street lights at intervals of 200 meters to 250 meters.


Radio waves in the 60 GHz band have the advantage that high-speed communication is possible, on the other hand, it has a big disadvantage that the reach of the radio waves is narrow because the radio waves tend to attenuate because the radio waves do not easily circulate. In order to compensate for this drawback, Terragraph plans to provide high-speed mobile communication by functioning as a node that mutually communicates the dedicated antennas made in the town. It seems that Facebook is utilizing the technology that Facebook has cultivated through data center management to control communication between Terragraph's nodes.


Terragraph can provide gigabit wireless communication at relatively inexpensive range within the urban population coverage ratio of 100% by combining with existing Wi - Fi access points. We are developing a Terragraph antenna that adopts an industrial design that does not impair the cityscape, and is undergoing experiments at Mellon Park where Facebook headquarters is located. I succeeded in bidirectional communication of 1.05 Gpbs at a distance of up to 250 m, and I anticipate that it will be able to improve the speed up to 12.8 Gbps in the future.

◆ Project ARIES
Project ARIES is a project aimed at providing 4G high-speed communication to the suburbs where there are only 2G and 3G mobile environments.MIMOIt is expected to increase bandwidth by technology. It is said that the prototype equipped with 96 radio wave transmitting antennas radially realized 10 times the energy efficiency of the conventional one.


According to Facebook, 97% of the world population lives within 40 kilometers from major cities, so it is possible to realize a high-speed mobile communication environment with Terragraph in urban areas and Project ARIES in rural areas such as rural areas. Furthermore, the remaining 3% is considered to be covered with the automatic flying droning "Aquila" which provides mobile lines from the air under study for a while.

Facebook announces drone "Aquila" enabling flying in sunlight to connect to remote areas - GIGAZINE