Qualcomm chips in on Facebook’s Terragraph fixed-wireless tech

Terragraph
Image credit: Terragraph website

Qualcomm announced that it will supply chipsets to Facebook’s Terragraph technology and help develop a multi-node 60-GHz wireless system designed to provide fiber-like connectivity for dense urban areas.

Terragraph – which is being developed under the open-source Telecom Infra Project (TIP) – is a terrestrial connectivity system that aims to improve the speed, efficiency and quality of internet connectivity around the world at only a fraction of the cost of fiber deployments.

Qualcomm Technologies will integrate its QCA6438 and QCA6428 family of pre-802.11ay chipsets with Terragraph, which will help enable manufacturers to build mmWave solutions using the unlicensed 60-GHz spectrum and offer consumers in urban areas access to high-speed fixed-wireless broadband connections. The companies expect to begin trials of the integrated solution mid-2019.

Terragraph supports broadband connectivity through a network based on millimeter-wave wireless backhaul. It is based on the pre-802.11ay standard with enhancements provided by the Qualcomm chipset and the integrated software between Facebook and Qualcomm to support efficient outdoor operation and avoid interference in dense environments.

Specifically, Qualcomm has optimized its solution for outdoor backhaul by introducing a number of enhancements such as TDMA-based protocol, time synchronized nodes, channel bonding and massive antenna array among others, to overcome large obstacles in dense urban environments, deliver high-capacity coverage, and the potential to reduce costs and time to market.

“Our collaboration with Facebook will bring advanced 11ad and pre-11ay technologies to market, increasing broadband penetration and enabling operators to reduce their capex for last mile access” said Irvind Ghai, vice president, product management at Qualcomm Atheros, a subsidiary of Qualcomm Technologies. “Terragraph cloud controller and TDMA architecture coupled with Qualcomm Technologies solution’s 10 Gbps link rate, low power consumption and early interference mitigation techniques will help make gigabit connectivity a reality.”

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