AraHaul employs a rich set of heterogeneous high-throughput wireless platforms, ranging from optical to mmWave, microwave, and LEO satellite communications. The AraHaul platforms operate at different spectrum bands and provide different capacity-range regions as follows:
- AraOptical: 194THz, 80+Gbps over 15km
- Aviat Networks WTM 4800: 71-76 & 80-86GHz, 20Gbps over 15km
- Aviat Networks WTM 4200: 11GHz, 2.5Gbps over 20km
- Aviat Networks WTM 4811: 11, 71-76 & 80-86GHz, 2.5-20Gbps over 15km
- LEO satellite communication terminal: 12-18G/26.5-40GHz, 100Mbps across planet
The AraOptical long-distance free-space optical communication platform will be developed by the ARA project team, and it offers whole-stack programmability as well as high capacity, adaptability, and robustness. The long-distance mmWave and microwave point-to-point communication platforms from the Aviat Networks represent the state-of-the-art in wireless backhaul communication, and it offers programmability, SDN support, and rich APIs for sensing wireless channel behavior (e.g., path loss and interference). Besides the LEO satellite communication terminals, AraHaul forms a terrestrial mesh spanning 60km in diameter, with link distance ranging from 9km to 24km. Accordingly, AraHaul enables research in multimodal, long-distance, high-throughput wireless backhaul communications, for instance, leveraging the spatial, temporal, and spectral channel diversity for robust high-capacity communication, and leveraging the RaptorQ rateless coding for real-time bandwidth aggregation.
AraRAN employs the Skylark low-UHF massive MIMO (mMIMO) SDR platform to enable whole-stack mMIMO research in the TVWS band and the public safety band. In collaboration with Skylark, ARA will also introduce programmable, high-performance mMIMO COTS network stack to the research community, thus offering the performance of production-grade COTS implementation and the programmability of research platforms at the same time. AraRAN also features SDR and programmable COTS mMIMO platforms in the EBS/BRS/CBRS bands, as well as general SDR and COTS platforms in the sub-7.2GHz band and mmWave band. The AraRAN deployment of these platforms enables research such as bandwidth aggregation, channel aggregation, and channel bonding which are expected to lay the foundation for high-throughput, universal, and affordable rural broadband.