We’re looking forward to the day that this DARPA project makes its way out of the military and into the hands of civilians. DARPA is working on an airborne wireless network that can drive data bandwidth at fiber-optic network speeds – a blazing 100 gigabits per second. If the project succeeds, we could not only be looking at much faster data connections on the battlefield, but better broadband support for people in rural areas where traditional high-speed fiber networking is cost prohibitive. The effort, called the 100 Gigabit-per-second RF Backbone (aka 100G), seeks to do more than just overcome the physics that limit current radio-based data connections used by the Defense Department’s Common Data Link (CDL) standard protocol (a high-speed secure wireless protocol that US military use today for high-capacity data streaming). The 100G initiative is searching for a solution that will be able to be deployed both to the battlefield and aboard aircraft—and work at distances of over 120 miles (200 kilometers). These networks will be over 500 times faster than their current wireless links and thousands of times faster than your home WiFi network.
According to DARPA:
“A major challenge to providing 100 Gb/s from an airborne asset to the ground is cloud cover. Free-space optical links won’t propagate through the cloud layer, which means RF is the only option. The system will be designed to provide all-weather capability enabling tactically relevant data throughput and link ranges through clouds, fog or rain. Technical advances in modulation of millimeter-wave frequencies open the door to achieving 100G’s goals. Providing fiber-optic-equivalent capacity on a radio frequency carrier will require spectrally efficient use of available RF spectrum. 100G plans to demonstrate how high-order modulation and spatial multiplexing can be synergistically combined to achieve 100 Gigabits per second with the size, weight and power needed for a deployable system. We believe that to achieve the program’s goals requires the convergence of telecommunications system providers and the defense communications tech base.”