Re-envisioning Air/Ground Communications for Aviation

As wireless and internet technologies mature, commercial communications are becoming more viable and beneficial to aviation stakeholders. Airline operators and air navigation service providers (ANSPs) are pressing the aviation industry to advance aviation air/ground communication technology and reduce the total cost of ownership of communication services. In this paper, we first introduce an enabling technology - performance-based multilink - that uses multiple commercial wireless technologies simultaneously to achieve higher performance, and therefore could potentially open the aviation air/ground communications market and enable use of commercial communications technologies in safety-critical applications. Then, we address potential transition strategies from the current state using dedicated assets with aviation-specific technologies to a target state using shared commercial assets with advanced communication technologies. We performed analysis to determine the air traffic service viability of commercial-based solutions in terms of performance, safety, security, aircraft equipage, and associated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ground architecture implications. Through the technical feasibility and strategic transition analysis, we envision that the future aviation air/ground communications may be more efficient, faster, safer, more secure, and more affordable by leveraging commercial wireless and internet technologies.