Introducing Facebook’s new terrestrial connectivity systems — Terragraph and Project ARIES

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Introduced Terragraph, a 60 GHz multi-node wireless system for dense urban areas, leveraging WiGig standard components, unlicensed spectrum, and a phase array antenna for steerable directional communication. It incorporates IPv6-only nodes, an SDN-like cloud compute controller, and a modular routing protocol, with a re-architected MAC layer using TDMA-TDD for improved network efficiency and TCP/IP predictability. Also introduced Project ARIES, a proof-of-concept for spectrally and energy-efficient wireless communication using Massive MIMO with a 96-antenna array, demonstrating high spectral efficiency (71 bps/Hz) and aiming for 100+ bps/Hz, with a focus on rural connectivity and potential for beyond-4G deployments.