Company News

From Mini-Circuits Test Equipment to Internet for All

Elizabeth Mokrousova, Publications Intern

July 1st, 2016 Facebook became a household name due to its profound success in launching
the worlds largest online social network. However, as a growing technology company,
Facebook invests heavily in a number of ambitious research and development projects beyond
their best-known product. Amongst these is a new technology that could bring connectivity to
people around the world who dont otherwise have access to the internet.
In a proposal published on Facebook, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg writes, For almost ten
years, Facebook has been on a mission to make the world more open and connected. Today we
connect more than 1.15 billion people each month, but as we start thinking about connecting the
next 5 billion, we realized something important: the vast majority of people in the world dont
have access to the internet. One of the foundational goals of Facebooks plan to connect the
next 5 billion is making internet access more affordable by developing more efficient methods of
data transmission. As it turns out, their development efforts to achieve that improvement in
efficiency are centered on a new kind of wireless infrastructure.
Because Facebook relies on wireless technologies to achieve mass connectivity, theyve found a
partner in Mini-Circuits, and theyre now using Mini-Circuits test equipment in their test labs.
Eight years ago, Mini-Circuits launched its portable test equipment (PTE) line and has
garnered growing attention from the RF and microwave industry ever since. Chi Man Shum,
Mini-Circuits VP of Test and Measurement, explains, All the portable test equipment evolved
into an integrated environment to become more customizable test systems. With these test
solution products, Mini-Circuits is supporting Facebooks testing and evaluation of systems and
equipment in the wireless connectivity space.
Facebook placed an order with Mini-Circuits for several USB/Ethernet controlled switch
matrices. These products are extremely popular with many customers in lab environments. The
matrices are used for routing signals between devices under test and measurement
instrumentation such as network analyzers. These products are also easy to use since theyre
compatible with almost any desktop or laptop computer and can be controlled through either
Mini-Circuits control software or directly through the users native test software. On top of this,
they also offer a low cost option compared to competing products in the market.
Through Facebooks Connectivity Labwhich theyve dubbed their initiative to expand global
access to the webtheyve already connected 25 million people to the internet. With the use of
Mini-Circuits test equipment, Facebook has begun working on ways to make connection more
affordable and accessible for people everywhere, including developing countries and rural areas
where internet connection is less available. With work underway on prototypes for two projects,
Terragraph, a series of nodes scattered across a city creating a wireless network, and
ProjectARIES, the testing platform for Terragraph technology, the world can hope to be more
connected than ever.

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This is an exciting opportunity for Mini-Circuits to be involved in the research and development
phase of a project that could potentially realize tremendous benefits to society. As Facebooks
efforts hopefully achieve success through various stages, there is potential for growth with
Facebook as our customer.
Created for urban areas, Terragraph is a wireless structure comprised of 4 nodes that are small in
size, but are part of a large network called WiGig. Currently, 7 GHz of spectrum around 60 GHz
is available for use, but countries putting WiGig in effect are trying to increase this to a total of
14 GHz. Wi-Fi networks operate on comparatively smaller bands of radio frequency spectrum,
about 80 MHz near 2.4 GHz and a few hundred MHz up around 5 GHz. The wider bandwidth of
WiGig essentially allows more room for information to travel. These nodes are inexpensive
when compared to the telecom infrastructures currently in use such as heavily wired antenna
towers.
WiGig was previously unsuitable for room-to-room home use because of radio waves inability
to pass through walls, making it only possible to connect multiple devices within one room.
Facebook is avoiding issues of signals being blocked in cities by planning to build the nodes at
small intervals, and including a special antenna called a phased array that will steer the
connection in multiple directions across the city, avoiding obstructions. Chi Man explains that in
Facebooks early prototypes and testing, Mini-Circuits switchboxes played a role in achieving
this directional connectivity, directing traffic from one point to another efficiently with the use of
software control.

Terragraph prototype node

The prototype built for Terragraph is currently not as attractive as the blueprint design Facebook
initially rolled out, but it is showing results with a proven 6x improvement in network efficiency.
For businesses in high-rises, these nodes can be attached to the outside of the building and then
connected to a local data network inside for faster connection within a large office. The same set-

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up can be used for apartment buildings or any other home with multiple families taking up
residency. This is a step up from the use of Wi-Fi in apartment and office buildings. With Wi-Fi,
every device is competing with the others for the same limited bandwidth, leading to network
congestion.
If successful, Terragraph would be one of the lowest cost solutions to achieve 100 percent
street-level coverage of gigabit Wi-Fi, Facebook claims. This is good news for those living in
rural areas as well since the low cost of setting up these nodes means theres a higher chance
theyll be able to get the same fast connectivity as city dwellers, which is Facebooks ultimate
mission. Terragraph is designed to have signals within a city reach the rural areas surrounding it
without quality or speed being inhibited. If Facebook successfully sets up high-speed internet for
cities and rural areas, then they have the potential to do the same for people who need internet
access in developing countries for education and economic development. As of right now, a pre-
paid mobile broadband offer is the most affordable option for internet service, but Terragraph
has the potential to out-perform any current options.

First version prototype antenna ray

ProjectARIES (Antenna Radio Integration for Efficiency in Spectrum) is the way Facebook will
prove the Terragraph concept. ARIES is their test platform for incredibly efficient usage of
spectrum and energy. The prototype of ProjectARIES is a base station with 96 antennas. It can
support 24 streams simultaneously within the same radio spectrum. This is essentially how it is
possible to provide internet connection to so many people, not only close to the Terragraph, but
also far away. Typically, the further away from a router you move, the more spread out the signal
will become, leading to the quality of your internet connection degrading. ProjectARIES
eliminates this problem with the use of beamforming, which focuses wireless signals so that
connections remain strong even far away from the source. ARIES uses this capability to its
advantage and can provide service that would cover an entire city and send out signals to rural
areas with no change in quality or performance.

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With broader connection comes the problem of speed. Theoretically, the more users are
connected to a wireless network, the slower the connection speed will be for each. According to
the International Telecommunication Unions method of measure, as of 2015, the US is in 15th
place when it comes to broadband internet speed, only rising one place since the 2010 rating,
while South Korea has been in 1st place consecutively since 2010.
This leads us to wonder: will Terragraph be able to not only make internet access more
accessible and affordable for the next 5 billion users, but also improve network speed and
efficiency? As development continues, Facebook is opening their technology up to the wireless
communications research and academic community, allowing feedback and input to improve the
product and prepare it for deployment as data consumption grows with each day.
Mini-Circuits has already played a role in this development with our test equipment by supplying
Facebook since last year and will continue to be a part of the worlds technological advancement
by supporting the next phases of this exciting project.

Photo Credit: www.code.facebook.com/

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