SZYUNZE comprehensive report: Recently, Google’s X (moonshot factorya) laboratory announced that the Taara team has successfully developed the next-generation Taara chip. The Taara chip is a silicon photonic chip. According to X.company’s official website, the Taara team is dedicated to using wireless optical communication (WOC) technology to bring fast and cost-effective connectivity to the world.
Similar to traditional optical fiber, which transmits data through underground cables, Taara uses an extremely narrow, invisible light beam to transmit information. This beam is sent between two small Taara terminals to create a link. In simple terms, it enables optical communication directly through the air without requiring fiber as a medium, providing near-fiber speeds to regions where fiber installation is economically or logistically challenging.
Taara’s wireless technology allows high-speed, bidirectional data transmission at up to 20Gbps over distances of up to 20 kilometers, with a power consumption of only 40W per unit. Each Taara link consists of two terminals equipped with mirrors and sensors to align, acquire, and track the light beam, ensuring it remains on target.
In open environments, optical communication must address interference caused by obstacles. The Taara team states that the signal between Taara terminals remains uninterrupted, even if mounted on a cellular tower that sways in the wind or if a bird flies through the beam’s path, ensuring continuous communication.
Since Taara operates on the optical spectrum, its data capacity is 30 times that of radio frequencies. Network operators and service providers can quickly deploy and redeploy Taara links to bring connectivity to new areas, provide backup for existing infrastructure, or offer temporary bandwidth for crowded events and even cities.
Previous Taara terminals were relatively large, about the size of a traffic light. This breakthrough has reduced the bulky terminal to a 13mm-long silicon photonic chip, which integrates both receiving and transmitting capabilities. Additionally, after miniaturization, the previous mechanical alignment process has been replaced by software, allowing users to transmit data at 10Gbps over a 1-kilometer outdoor distance.
Taara’s General Manager, Mahesh Krishnaswamy, stated that compared to Starlink, Taara’s technology can offer users bandwidth 10 to even 100 times higher at a significantly lower cost than Starlink.
Long-distance optical communication through the air is currently a cutting-edge research area in optical communications, primarily being developed by university research teams. In 2022, a team from Xi’an University of Technology developed an adaptive optics-based correction system to address wavefront distortion caused by atmospheric turbulence. Using two types of control algorithms—wavefront-sensing methods (such as proportional-integral-derivative control) and wavefront-free methods (such as stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithms)—they significantly improved signal quality. Experiments showed that after correction, the mid-frequency signal amplitude and signal-to-noise ratio of coherent optical communication systems improved significantly, achieving video and voice transmission in 10-kilometer and 100-kilometer field tests.
In the aerospace sector, laser communication has already been put into application. In 2023, NASA’s Psyche probe, at a distance of 30 million kilometers from Earth, used a Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) terminal to transmit 8K video at a rate of 33MB/s, validating the feasibility of laser communication over ultra-long distances. This technology is planned for future Mars missions, with a target data rate of 250Mbps.
a. Google X (Moonshot Factory): https://x.company/
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