Northrop demonstrates 100Gbps transmission for airborne sensors

In January of this year, as part of DARPA's 100Gbps RF Backbone program, Northrop successfully demonstrated the ability to send data from an airborne platform, at 100Gbps over 12.4 miles. The transmission was between two ground stations in the LA area. That is fast enough to download a 50 GB Blu-ray disc in 4 seconds.

In phase two of the program, which began in June, they're hoping to demonstrate that capability over 60 miles, and the ability to transmit farther at lower transmission rates.

www.flightglobal.com...

Wow. Again, wow.

But with millimeter wavelengths it's definitely line of sight.

Welp. With the network backbone soon to having issues with bottlenecking and congestion due to IoT this may ne a way out

a reply to: Zaphod58

I like how they say, “algorithms have to be rewritten” because at some point a load from disk will be too slow to be situationally aware with all this data!

Micro cube satellites to the rescue!!

a reply to: Phage

They're looking at the ability to transmit to guys on the ground, so you're going to be line of sight.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Jammable?

a reply to: anzha

Very difficult. Not impossible, but very very difficult.

a reply to: Zaphod58

As awesome as that is why does my home WIFI suck donkey things? I personally feel cheated and used..... Not cool but cool at the same time......I’m so confused ATM

a reply to: Zaphod58

Which case, it sounds like a microwave weapon thing to do or just shoot down the carrier.

a reply to: anzha

You have to be able to find it. If they get the range up, and put it on something capable of getting high, that's LO, it becomes a lot more difficult.

and a latancy of OVER 9000

a reply to: Zaphod58

That's part of the reason I like lasers more. They don't sidelobe. This will do so much, much less than say a normal com, but even if there are enough sniffers...

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: Zaphod58

I like how they say, “algorithms have to be rewritten” because at some point a load from disk will be too slow to be situationally aware with all this data!

Micro cube satellites to the rescue!!

Most servers have already moved to SSD's and replaced the spinning platters of rust. It's going to be like the modifications made to the deep space network. They could send a packet of data in microseconds, but the latency going across the solar system means they have to wait minutes between a packet being sent and received. So they made the packets a larger size and modified the network protocols to handle hundreds if not thousands of packets in transit at the same time.

a reply to: anzha

This gives them an almost real time ability to get sensor data to the guys on the ground. Park a VLO platform overhead, with the newer sensors, and the guys on the ground get unprecedented situational awareness.

You could even put this on a JSTARS type platform and give the guys on the ground the ability to get their data in real time, instead of having to send it back to a ground station, filter it, and then send it forward after reducing the data to something we can currently transmit easily.

a reply to: stormcell

So we are talking a whole system upgrade?

Makes me wonder how far behind the black project budget we really are.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

It's not that simple. You can't just say "we're x years behind the black world". There are areas the white world drives the black, there are areas the black is far ahead of the white, and there are areas where the two are roughly equal.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I agree, the last project I worked on sent data to a handheld device, without inventing faster data transfer we used the white worlds data compression software which was in advance of our military.

Hundreds of thousands of software engineers around the world writing open source mpeg/h.265 or whatever was much simpler than trying to do it yourself.

Whilst the data being streamed was protected by military encryption, open source compression was the best solution for us!

a reply to: Zaphod58

wonder what the latency is?

if its fast enough i wonder if video would be fast enough to fly a a2a drone

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: stormcell

So we are talking a whole system upgrade?

Makes me wonder how far behind the black project budget we really are.

www.space.com...

Here's a paper for the TCP-Planet protocol:

pdfs.semanticscholar.org...

a reply to: Zaphod58

What's the difference between this system and the one that's on our underwater drones? I know someone that operates drones all over the world from their desk in Mississippi.