The IEEE 802.16 standard itself consists of a huge set of options and provides only the functionality; therefore, interoperability among different vendor implementations is difficult. The WiMAX Forum has been formed in order to provide certificates about conformity and verification of interoperability. Certificates are given for so called “profiles”, where a profile defines a subset of options from the IEEE 802.16 standard. Not all of these options are mandatory to be implemented. The AeroMACS communication system took the WiMAX Forum Mobile System Profile Specification as a baseline. This paper present a comparison of academic concepts versus implementations in the field based on the future airport communications system AeroMACS. That is, features realized on paper are often implementation intensive and expensive to realize in interoperable products. Therefore, many concepts and corresponding functionalities as described in IEEE 802.16 are not available in products. This paper presents selected features of the data link layer which shall support higher layers services of such as mobility management, quality of service, and multicast.

Air traffic in Europe is expected to double by 2025 in Europe. An integrated aircraft communication system is thus of paramount importance to ensure the sustainable growth of European air traffic. The SANDRA (“Seamless Aeronautical Networking Through Integration of Data Links, Radios and Antennas”) project designed, implemented and validated an integrated aeronautical communications system based on an open architecture, a common set of interfaces and on well-proven industry standards. Integration has been addressed at different levels in the SANDRA project of which this paper focuses on the integration at network level. This paper addresses the computer simulations of the SANDRA network architecture. The network designs investigated in SANDRA were validated, and their performance was assessed. The aim was to carry out network design parameter optimization and default value recommendations.

In order to enlarge airspace capacity operational changes supported through data link communications are necessary. The SESAR master plan addresses the enforcement of operational changes in three steps. The SESAR data link deployment baseline shall be realized through existing communication infrastructure. SESAR step 1 will introduce new ATS services which will initially be run via the existing VDL2 infrastructure. Uncertainties exist when existing communication systems will become saturated and new systems need to be developed and deployed. It is important to identify when data link systems and especially VDL2 becomes saturated with respect to growing air traffic and new data based operations for ATM. This paper discusses a conceptual approach how an assessment to calculate the break even performance of VDL2 could look like.

Civil aviation business is currently experiencing the beginning of an operational change from voice based toward data based control mechanisms. This change shall be accompanied through a technological improvement that is in particular a change from an ISO/OSI toward a TCP/IP based network infrastructure. This paper presents outcomes of two independent investigations of utilizing the initial specification for the Aeronautical Telecommunication Network (ATN) using Internet Protocol Suite (IPS) standards and protocols via aeronautical data links. Thereby, both studies had one common objective, namely the validation of the ATN/IPS via aeronautical data links. One study was conducted by University of Salzburg through the evaluation of simulations, while the other study was conducted by the Swedish air navigation service provider LFV through flight trials based on real protocol implementations. Despite the difference of the evaluation scenarios the conclusions that can be drawn from both studies are similar.

Multilink is in theory a trivial definition where an end-node has multiple network interfaces with the potential to connect to different networks but is in practice difficult to implement. Within this paper we will survey and summarize state of the art concepts for multilink and multi-homed architectures. Additionally, we will show real-life scenarios in order to demonstrate the feasibility of concepts for a multilinked aeronautical environment.

Operations relevant for air traffic management are based on procedures communicated through speech commands. These procedures are human centric, thus unautomated. Following predictions of air traffic growth forecasts, air traffic will increase no matter which forecast model is taken into account. High density air traffic areas become inefficient to handle through un-automated procedures. As a result air traffic management requires support of automated and consequently data based processes. Such processes could only be supported if data communication services are offered homogeneously in relevant areas. That is, data link and network services have to be interoperable on a worldwide basis. Currently large scale industry consortia in Europe and the United States are focusing on increasing efficiency of air traffic management through advanced concepts based on data communication applications. These activities demand a lot of coordination amongst participating organizations in order to achieve technical, economical, and political consensus amongst all partners. This paper addresses the status quo of aeronautical data communication services, visions of possible emerging aeronautical data links, and the integration of these data links into an all IP based communication system relevant for air traffic management and operations, respectively.

Goals: For the lab trials the following data links are included: VDL2, L-Band, Ku-Band, AeroMACS For the flight trials, three data links are envisioned; VDL2, L-Band, AeroMACS Interconnection between IR, IMR, Antennas, AeroMACS and ground system will be shown For all data links at least one exemplary application will be shown Due to the use of legacy (VDL2, BGAN) and non-legacy (AeroMACS) also the handling of the future transition phase of systems will be shown AeroMACS deployed at real aircraft including take-off and landing and tested at two airports New development of ATN/OSI over VDL2 / IP (AeroMACS, SBB) stack.

In order to support a more efficient design of Air Traffic Management (ATM) a paradigm shift from voice based toward data based communications becomes necessary. This change shall be accompanied through a technological improvement, that is in particular a change from an ISO/OSI toward an TCP/IP based network infrastructure. This paper addresses issues to be considered when operating IPv6 via aeronautical data links. Furthermore, reasonable solutions are elaborated and assessed.

All advanced concepts of operation in future Air Traffic Management (ATM) assume that digital air/ground and air/air links are available. Seeking to define a future communication system suitable for planned air-to-air and air-to-ground ATM operations, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and EUROCONTROL initiated a joint study in the frame of Action Plan 17 (AP17) to investigate suitable technologies and provide recommendations to the ICAO ACP Working Group T. Two proposals for the L-band Digital Aeronautical Communication System (L-DACS) were elaborated. This paper discusses the L-DACS1 proposal, a multi-application broadband system capable of simultaneously supporting various kinds of air-to-air and air-to-ground Air Traffic Services (ATS) and Airline Operational Communications (AOC) data link services. This paper presents the research towards the design and the performance evaluation of the proposed medium access control sub-layer and logical link control sublayer of the L-DACS1 air-to-air protocol stack. The L-DACS1 air-to-air protocol has been designed for the periodic transmission of air-to-air surveillance data while supporting the transmission of a low volume of non-periodic addressed air-to-air messages. It tries to achieve this objective via a self-adaptive slotted TDMA protocol.

Air transportation is an important factor for the economic growth of the European Union, however, the current system is already approaching its capacity limits and needs to be reformed to meet the demands of further sustainable development. In 2003, at the eleventh ICAO Air Navigation Conference it has been agreed that the aeronautical air-ground communications infrastructure has to evolve to provide the capacity and quality of service required to support future air traffic management. The development of the L-band Digital Aeronautical Communication System LDACS was started. The system discussed in this paper, LDACS1, has been derived by merging aspects of B-AMC, TIA-902 (P34), and WiMAX IEEE 802.16e technologies. This paper discusses the evolution of the LDACS 1 system design after the first system specification was completed in 2008. This covers an improved medium access and logical link control design optimized for the ATN/IPS. This work was performed in the context of preparation activities for the further development of LDACS1 within the Single European Sky ATM Research SESAR framework.

• Wireless interface profile has been assessed and evaluated • The R1 (wireless interface) is just one part of an access network • Data Link Layer overhead is roughly 15 % at good channel conditions • Very good latency figures (for best effort QoS) • TODO: Efficient integration into the ATN IPS

The future airport surface communication system, called AeroMACS, shall be based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, in particular on the "WiMAX Mobile System Profile Specification". In the course of the SANDRA project the IEEE standard and the WIMAX mobile profile have been investigated and different configuration options have been evaluated. This paper presents an overview of options related to data exchange and possibilities how to integrate an AeroMACS system into an IPS based communication network. Furthermore, selected results from a performance evaluation study are shown.

The future aeronautical airport communication system - AeroMACS - shall be based on WiMAX. A specifically drafted system profile suitable for airport communications shall be evaluated through simulations. In order to assess the performance properly an assumption on the data traffic load for airport surface communications was necessary. This paper presents the data traffic load model used as input for the AeroMACS communication profile definition.

The use of satellites for air traffic management purposes offers many benefits for the future aeronautical communications infrastructure. Satellites can provide seamless and nearly global coverage over land masses, oceans, and remote areas with a reduced terrestrial infrastructure. Research and Development for a new satellite based air-ground data link has been endorsed by the EU Transport Council. It is widely shared among stakeholders that use of this satellite link in dense continental airspace requires new performance standards, which calls for a new ATM-dedicated satellite communication standard and the supporting satellite capacity. This paper provides a characterization of the future data communication traffic profile and derives initial bandwidth estimation for a satellite system providing the service in the ECAC region.

Aeronautical data communication networks are about to evolve in the upcoming decade. So called “Commercial Of The Shelf (COTS)” products should play a major role in the next generation aeronautical network. However, protocols developed and specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) are not always mature and are produced for a wide range of commercial applications. This means that protocols tend to have many options and higher management overhead is accepted more willingly. The bandwidth-limited aeronautical wireless link should, however, be used as efficiently as possible. This paper investigates possible concepts of IPS for an aeronautical network and analyses the involved overhead. Additionally, a first evaluation of a header compression protocol simulation shows whether such a protocol can be applied reasonably or not.