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Communications Facebook Network Networking The Internet Wireless Networking News Hardware Science Technology

Facebook Pitches Laser Beams As The High-Speed Internet Of The Future (pcworld.com) 93

Posted by BeauHD from the high-speed-internet dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld: Facebook says it has developed a laser detector that could open the airwaves to new high-speed data communications systems that don't require dedicated spectrum or licenses. The component, disclosed on Tuesday in a scientific journal, comes from the company's Connectivity Lab, which is involved in developing technology that can help spread high-speed internet to places it currently doesn't reach. At 126 square centimeters, Facebook's new laser detector is thousands of times larger. It consists of plastic optical fibers that have been "doped" so they absorb blue light. The fibers create a large flat area that serves as the detector. They luminesce, so the blue light is reemitted as green light as it travels down the fibers, which are then bundled together tightly before they meet with a photodiode. It's described in a paper published on Tuesday in the journal Optica. Facebook says there are applications for the technology both indoors and outdoors. Around the home, it could be used to transmit high-definition video to mobile devices. Outdoors, the same technology could be used to establish low-cost communications links of a kilometer or more in length. In tests, the company managed to achieve a speed of 2.1Gbps using the detector, and the company thinks it can go faster. By using materials that work closer to infrared, the speed could be increased. And using yet-to-be developed components that work at wavelengths invisible to the human eye, the speed could be increased even more. If invisible to humans, the power could also be increased without danger of harming someone, further increasing speed and distance.
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Facebook Pitches Laser Beams As The High-Speed Internet Of The Future More

Facebook Pitches Laser Beams As The High-Speed Internet Of The Future

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  • Harm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @09:28PM (#52544847) Homepage

    And using yet-to-be developed components that work at wavelengths invisible to the human eye, the speed could be increased even more. If invisible to humans, the power could also be increased without danger of harming someone, further increasing speed and distance.

    Yes, because as everybody knows, UV does no damage to the human eye...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by msauve ( 701917 )
      I came to say basically the same, but about sunburn and cancer. Beyond that, the whole article is Bookface marketing puffery.

    • You instinctively turn away from visible lasers (Score:4, Informative)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @09:42PM (#52544901) Journal

      Yeah invisible lasers are normally considered MORE dangerous. When even a 5mw visible laser hits your eye, you instinctively turn away immediately. The extremely bright light is uncomfortable. If you can't see it, you don't instinctively turn away. See Chuang LH, Lai CC, Yang KJ, Chen TL, Ku WC (2001). "A traumatic macular hole secondary to a high-energy Nd:YAG laser".

      OSHA and other bodies require EXTRA safety measures for invisible or nearly invisible lasers. (Near infrared fiber optic lasers can appear to be a dim red. They are actually very bright, just on the verge on the wavelength humans can see.)

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        It seems that that absurdity in pcworld is the author's poor interpretation of this:

        If materials were developed that operate in the infrared part of the spectrum, which would be invisible to people, and were even faster than the blue/green light system, the new approach could theoretically allow free-space optical data rates of more than 10 Gbps, Tiecke said.

    • Re:Harm (Score:4, Informative)

      by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @09:46PM (#52544937) Journal

      385nm is invisible to almost all humans, being on the long-ish wavelength of UV, and I wouldn't really say it was very damaging. Everyone likes to jump on the bandwagon like they actually know something about UV when in fact they don't. I've worked with it over 25 years, still do. Out of the millions of products sold, I've never had an injury reported. People do get hurt with UV, but that is exceedingly rare and usually because they didn't follow directions or did something really stupid.

      Inside fiber, it is pretty harmless. Most plastics block it (excepting OP4 acrylic), the vast majority of paints absorb it and won't reflect it. It has a smaller wavelength, thus more waves per centimeter, ie: more data. I'm not saying their plan is good or bad, but blanket calling UV dangerous and not workable is ignorant.

      • Inside fiber, it is pretty harmless.

        Perhaps you missed the fact that this system is intended for wireless (i.e. fiberless, too) data transmission.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Khyber ( 864651 )

        "385nm is invisible to almost all humans, being on the long-ish wavelength of UV, and I wouldn't really say it was very damaging."

        Your research is way out of date. Every LED unit with UV-A I've ever sold was required to have a level 2 JEDEC eye hazard warning.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          Indeed, UVA is quite dangerous to human eyes - even though there are other wavelengths that are more dangerous. Metal halide lights for example kick out a great deal of UVA. To prevent eye damage they have to have a filter to block it. In cases where the filter has been damaged it can lead eye damage and even temporary blindness.

          I think perhaps the person is confusing the fact that UVA doesn't damage DNA (except indirectly) with it not being damaging to the eye.

        • Kind of funny, our company is on the cutting edge actually, but in fluorescents, not LEDs, which are terrible for producing what we would consider high output of UVB or UVA. There is a huge difference between 320nm and 399nm, yet both are "UVA". 320nm has a lot more energy, and as you up in frequency (down in nm), it forms a Bell curve and gets exponentially more damaging. It also goes down in penetration, which is why you can get a quick flash burn from UVC (100nm-280nm) that doesn't penetrate more than

      • You'll like this story then. A friend of mine was buying sunglasses from a Chinese factory. He was asking about the UV protection level, and evidently there was some problem translating the concept. Him and his translator went back and forth with the factory owner a few times with no result. Finally, a light goes on in the owner's eyes and he says, in English, "Ahh, yes...we have sticker!" True story.

    • If invisible to humans, the power could also be increased without danger of harming someone

      You got it. If you can't see it then it can't hurt you. Or at least you can't protect yourself from it and will have a hard time proving that we were the one who did something to you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DeSigna ( 522207 )

      Do not stare at Internet with remaining eye?

    • It's not the 1990s, Slashdot; fix your unicode support. It's ridiculous that I can't type a thorn here.

      While I personally agree with this, since there are apparently many that do not, I believe that the best compromise would be for slashdot to process text through a unicode filter when a user clicks the submit button, and if any non-ascii is detected, then it should go to a warning screen and require resubmission to accept it, similar to what happens if you happen to have a short response and click 'submit

      • That's not the problem with Unicode (some bias against it). The problem is all the control codes/characters that can affect objects outside the bounds of the comment box. Of course the answer is blocking those or whitelisting a wide amount of Unicode characters. And I guess Slashdot either doesn't want to dedicate the resources, or just know that it will be called censorship when they allow some, but not all, of UTF-8 or more.

  • It's larger! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by konohitowa ( 220547 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @09:34PM (#52544879) Journal

    At 126 square centimeters, Facebook's new laser detector is thousands of times larger.

    Umm. Than what? Who writes this crap?

  • If the last mile problem could be solved with 1km more reach, we'd have done it with wires already.

    • What you'd have, in principle, is relays approx. every km. Presumably it would be better to make the relay length shorter so that you could build in some redundancy. But this kind of solution is still not very good as it is impacted very strongly by weather.

  • Is it 1992 again? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Laser beams are the high speed internet of today

  • "Outdoors, the same technology could be used to establish low-cost communications links of a kilometer or more in length."

    Weather would prevent transmission through the air outside, of all wavelengths. Raindrops scatter light. Fog scatters light.

  • What the hell, Slashdot?

  • The author of this summary obviously did.

  • Here's an idea (Score:3)

    by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @12:32AM (#52545507)
    Here's an idea - let's use those laser but safely contain them within glass fibres with the advantage of getting better range and more than line of sight!

    You can tell the idea in the summary came from a software company and not a hardware company. Reinventing the wheel as a square thing made of rock.

  • Stoooooooooopid (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @12:40AM (#52545515) Journal

    "If invisible to humans, the power could also be increased without danger of harming someone, further increasing speed and distance."

    That's an incredibly stupid thing to say, since it isn't true. Just because it's "invisible" to human eyes doesn't mean that it can't/won't hurt human eyes.

    Seriously, the level of stupid in that one sentence makes me dizzy.

    • "If invisible to humans, the power could also be increased without danger of harming someone, further increasing speed and distance." That's an incredibly stupid thing to say, since it isn't true. Just because it's "invisible" to human eyes doesn't mean that it can't/won't hurt human eyes.

      But this was about UV light spreading out over several square inches at distance. The lens of the eye is cloudy to near-UV light, and won't focus to a spot. The reason it's invisible, makes it less likely to damage y

  • Why do we care that Facebook is doing this? (Score:3)

    by Transcendent ( 204992 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:22AM (#52546579)

    Freespace optical communication has been around for a long, long time. It's a problematic system to use in an atmosphere, since anything and everything can degrade the throughput. So, now we get to use a system the is horribly degraded whenever it's foggy, rains, or birds are flying around? No thank you.

    Other systems have shown to achieve 10GB/s, so their test of 2GB/s isn't that revolutionary.

    Let's stop the clickbait of *random famous company does something that other people have done before*.

  • Glad to hear that Facebook is following RFC 1925 part 11 and proposing something that countless others have tried and failed to do widespread, because of physics.
    Keep proving those universal networking truths!

  • LLCD and OPALS have both demonstrated the feasibility of laser comm. Weather is somewhat of a problem but it can be addressed by implementing error correction code. I'm glad to see private industry showing interest in this very promising technology. OPALS was able to reach speeds of 50Mbs which is a good improvement over existing satellite internet speeds. Unfortunately the article does not make it clear under what conditions was the 2Gbs speed achieve or how are they planning to use it indoors, I would im

  • > If invisible to humans, the power could also be increased without danger of harming someone,

    Apparently someone doesn't understand lasers.

  • ... tried [wikipedia.org]. Not successfully.

  • Well, I guess my tv remote always had it. Remember when your laptop did?

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