Google’s parent company Alphabet has several research and development businesses under its umbrella. Many technologies developed by these various businesses tend to cross-pollinate other projects throughout the group. Project Taara, an offshoot of the shuttered Project Loon, has sent over 700 terabytes of data across the Congo River with a laser beam at a speed of 20 gigabits per second.
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In the balloon internet Project Loon, Alphabet were planning to send hundreds of high-altitude balloons into the atmosphere to deliver internet throughout the world where traditional infrastructure isn’t necessarily available. It would use the Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC) links to connect the balloons to each other. It is this technology that is being used in Project Taara, with initial tests actively in use providing a high-speed broadband link for people in Africa.
FSOC is essentially a fibre-optic connection without the cables. It creates a connection faster than 20Gbps over two points where there is a clear line of sight. Its wireless optical link has been used to connect internet service across the Congo River, from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Despite sending its communications without the protection of a physical fiber, Taara says that during the test period, its link had 99.9 percent availability. According to a Project Taara statement, the aim is that end users don’t know when their communications are using FSOC instead of fibre and that it aims to provide an indistinguishable experience. Weather is also not a worry for the engineers, claiming that they have not yet come across a weather situation where their link didn’t work.
The mirrors in the receptors can automatically adjust to connect “a light beam the width of a chopstick accurately enough to hit a 5-centimeter target that’s 10 kilometres away.”
