Planning

Every deployment consists of a base site and remote site. Each site require a stable mounting structure (e.g., tower, rooftop, wall) for the Taara terminals, power, and a secure space in which to store ancillary equipment (e.g., switch, PoE injector, Linux PC).

Every deployment requires a management link to enable power control and allow access to the Taara terminals at both sites. Usually, the management link can be set up using a separate pair of radio antennas (or fiber) that may already exist on site.

A hybrid architecture is recommended for customers that require high availability. At each site, there will be a wireless optical communication terminal, a switch, and a point-to-point radio antenna or fiber for carrying management traffic. This management link may be configured to carry backup traffic. During outages on the wireless optical link, traffic would fail over to the backup link, and switch back to wireless optical once conditions are stable. The switchover to radio is agnostic to the radio physical layer as long as it supports ethernet interface.

At specific sites of interest, we can estimate link performance over various distances using data from nearby weather stations. Where data is available, we can break out the effects of factors like visibility, rain, turbulence, and wind load, and also break down the performance estimates by hour, day, and month. If the weather data is not locally available or representative, we will generate estimates using your recommended data source (e.g., from weather stations at other sites with similar climate, your own weather stations, or government meteorology department).

If you plan to deploy multiple links over a geographic area, we can automate line of sight analyses for up to hundreds of locations and provide guidance on optimal network topologies (e.g., redundancy, daisy chain, mesh).

The impact of a relay configuration on overall network availability depends on how much the weather is correlated between the different segments. If you plan to deploy more than 3 links in a relay configuration, we can estimate the availability for this network topology at your locations of interest.

A mesh configuration, especially if it involves hybrid architectures with wireless optical communication, radio, and fiber, can improve the resilience of the overall network by introducing spatial diversity and independent failure mechanisms of multiple technologies.

Taara Lightbridge links operate in the near-infrared band of the electromagnetic spectrum that is unregulated per the International Telecommunications Union standards. Taara Lightbridge links are compliant with applicable global safety standards for laser safety, electrical and mechanical safety, ingress protection, outdoor installation, and electromagnetic testing. Taara Lightbridge equipment have received Type Approval for import into India and many African countries, and we will work with you to appear before your local communication authorities and make any submissions as necessary on a joint basis to ensure the links may be deployed in particular locations of interest. You are ultimately responsible for obtaining and maintaining compliance with local jurisdictions, including site access, permission to install equipment on site, and provision of internet service.

For a trained installer team, 2 people are required for establishing line of sight during the site survey, and 3-4 people during site preparation and link installation.

Each deployment requires a fiber point of presence at one end, and if bandwidth will be extended to individual premises, an access technology to distribute the bandwidth over the last mile network.

If the obstruction is a hanging cable, passage for a ship, or otherwise vertically fixed, you can adjust the height of the terminal on the mounting structure. Alternatively, you can shift the position of the terminal laterally, or break up the link into two or more segments with clear line of slight along each segment.

For a trained installer team, a deployment can take just a few hours at a brownfield site or multiple days at a greenfield site, depending on the amount of site preparation.