Government

Pentagon Sets Out to Create the Ultimate Wireless Network

by admin

As reported on Mashable.

by Pete Pachal

Darpa-rf-wireless

3G? Pathetically slow. WiMax? Not good enough. LTE? Still lacking. The U.S. military has looked at all current wireless standards as well as the ones on the drawing board (such as LTE-Advanced) and apparently concluded that they’re all not up to the challenge of supporting troops in the years to come. So it’s taking the matter into its own hands.DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is setting out to create an ultra-fast wireless standard that matches or beats the abilities of today’s fiber-optic networks. That means a connection that can support speeds of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps). To compare, a typical real-world LTE connection provides about 30 megabits per second, or 0.03 Gbps.

When DARPA says it wants to match fiber-optic performance, it means range as well as speed. The new standard must provide connectivity at a range of 125 miles between two “airborne assets” (i.e. planes) and 60 miles between a plane and the ground.

 

 

One big issue: The new standard must work in all weather conditions, meaning planes need to be able to transmit data to the ground through clouds, fog, rain, snow — you name it. That means the only option is to use RF (radio frequency) since other wireless technologies either lack the range needed or require line-of-sight for transmission to work.

Currently, the military uses a standard known as the Tactical Common Data Link (TCDL) for secure communication of heavy data. However, TCDL is relatively slow, maxing out at about 10.7 Mbps at 125 miles, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Most consumer handsets today get better data rates via LTE (though not at that range, obviously).

Clearly, that’s not good enough for tomorrow’s military, so DARPA is kicking off its “Radio Frequency Data Backbone” project with a “proposers’ day” in early 2013. Anyone with a plan to create the new, ultimate wireless standard can submit their ideas to the agency to have them heard on Jan. 13.