TriaGnoSys (Germany)

SummaryThe demand for mobile broadband services is increasing exponentially alongside with user expectations regarding the reachability of these services and their prices. This paper presents an integrated satellite and fifth generation (5G) network for providing inflight connectivity and evaluates the economic viability of offering broadband connectivity to passengers on commercial airplanes by the development of a techno‐economic framework, which considers both capital and operational expenditures to compute the total cost of ownership (TCO) and an average cost per user and per Megabyte. Results show high operational costs mainly due to satellite bandwidth usage. Therefore, caching popular content on the network onboard is beneficial to reduce the traffic carried over the satellite link, thus lowering the operational costs as well. Furthermore, the framework is used to compare the identified business models for Inflight Entertainment and Connectivity offerings and their pricing strategies, alongside a benchmark against the current inflight connectivity pricing. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is elaborated in order to mitigate the uncertainty of inputs (e.g., rate of caching) used to feed the TCO model. Following concrete recommendations are the main result of this research: (1) Providing inflight broadband services with a 2–5 Mbps throughput per user is feasible if satellite communications is integrated into the 5G network. (2) Caching popular data reduces the operational costs and hence the average cost per user (from 25% to 32% depending on the caching rate adopted). (3) This framework allows to provide recommendations on the best suited business models and related pricing schemes.

Fifth-generation (5G) systems are being designed not only to face the unprecedented growth of mobile data traffic forecasted for the coming years but also to support other multiple and diverse use cases associated with new market segments and vertical industries (e.g., connected cars, smart cities, e-health, and smart factories). Hence, 5G systems are envisioned to become flexible and versatile network infrastructures that can be leveraged through a wide range of service-delivery models (e.g., neutral network hosting, network as a service, and private networks) and operators can customize for different applications and customer needs using network slicing.

5G networks will incorporate new innovative technologies and concepts such as network virtualization, SDN/NFV, multi-tenancy and network slicing. Moreover, resource orchestration play a pivotal role to dynamically deploy network services and allocate resources. Orchestration is a control function for resource management in the network core and centralized cloud infrastructure. However, for end-to-end slicing and resource management, the orchestration functions must also be realized at the network edge i.e., the RAN segment. In this paper, we present an architecture for active RAN resource orchestration in which radio resource allocation to different tenants is dynamically scaled in real-time. A parallel can be drawn to the classic spectrum sharing scenarios as we evaluate the well known co-primary sharing model in a multi-tenant RAN context. Moreover, we extend SimuLTE, a well-known system level simulation model to integrate our RAN orchestration architecture and implement different scheduling policies. We evaluate system level network performance using fine-grained radio resource sharing approach and evaluate the involved performance-fairness trade-offs.

The operators of the business and regional aviation in Europe would strongly benefit from inflight weather forecasting and trajectory tracking in order to fly safely and to optimise the trajectory. On the other hand, weather agencies would greatly benefit from weather observations provided by regional and business aviation (e.g. temperature and wind speed data collected by the aircraft sensors, nowadays delivered only by commercial airlines in the framework of AMDAR) as they would drastically increase geographical coverage and number of measurement thanks to different routes w.r.t. commercial airlines. Near-real-time in-flight weather services for business and regional aviation are nowadays quite well developed in USA, but still very limited in Europe due to the lack of equivalent infrastructure and service offer. Thus, the PLANET-2 project, co-funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and led by ATMOSPHERE-F (F) with ATMOSPHERE-D (G), DLR (G), TRIAGNOSYS (G) and METEO-FRANCE (F), aims at developing a commercially sustainable in-flight weather service based on integrated space assets (i.e. SatCom and Navigation, with the support of Earth Observation data for some of the weather products) and terrestrial wireless networks (e.g. GPRS, 3G, 4G) to reduce service costs. The paper presents the main results of the work carried out to meet the PLANET-2 requirements.

This paper introduces a rapidly deployable wireless network based on Low Altitude Platforms and portable land units to support disaster-relief activities, and to extend capacity during temporary mass events. The system integrates an amalgam of radio technologies such as LTE, WLAN and TETRA to provide heterogeneous communications in the deployment location. Cognitive radio is used for autonomous network configuration. Sensor networks monitor the environment in real-time during relief activities and provide distributed spectrum sensing capacities. Finally, remote communications are supported via S-band satellite links.

The presence of a virtual private network over a broadband satellite link creates some issues that must be addressed to avoid degradation on the overall performance. This paper presents these issues and proposes solutions to them from the point of view of the satellite operator. Then, these solutions are evaluated through a set of measurements on a testbed that simulates satellite links connecting an airplane with the ground.

The two incumbent aeronautical satellite communication service providers are operating in L-band with very little scope for expansion. Thus, new service offerings are aiming at new frequency bands where capacity is still available and the expectation for lower cost per megabyte may be realisable. Ku-band has already seen both, failed Aerosatcom service provision attempts (e.g. CbB) and new start-ups (e.g. Panasonic/AeroMobile/Lufthansa). Kaband has become the new frontier, seen to provide relief from growing demand on spectrum where Ku spectrum may run into limitations, when Fixed Satellite Services (FSS), Broadcast Satellite services (BSS) and Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) start to compete for satellite capacity and orbital slots in earnest. An ESA-funded study aims at the assessment of the commercial and technical feasibility of a number of non-safety aeronautical communication (AAC and APC) solutions and business models in a 15 years timeframe in order to identify the commercial viability and technical feasibility of current and emerging connectivity solutions for the air transport, business aviation and government market segments.

This paper presents the statistics of antenna view angle from aircrafts to Inmarsat GEO satellites. In addition a parametric model is proposed to estimate the impact of aircraft attitude change (roll, pitch, and yaw) to the satellite antenna view angles. Without delving into the details of geometrical attitude modeling, it is shown that an accurate argument can be constructed on the impact of aircraft movements and banking maneuvers to the satellite view angle. The results are presented as statistics over global scheduled flights in one day period. The statistic results are discussed at the end of the paper, where their impacts to the overall system design are analyzed.

A low profile scanning antenna for reception of S-DMB is under development in the frame of the ESA funded project "Cost-Optimised High Performance Active Receive Phase Array Antenna for Mobile Terminals (CORPA)". The aforementioned project objectives are the design, prototyping and testing of a complete antenna based on digital beam forming (DBF) providing multimedia reception within the S-DMB system. The antenna is able to electronically scan a circularly polarised beam in the range 8 to 72 degrees, covering DMB satellites and including some margin for vehicle tilt. A conformal, phased array antenna based on DBF has been selected providing an attractive solution for such medium gain antenna. Moreover, DBF allows avoiding a complex phase calibration and provides a good auto-tracking performance in a harsh environment in terms of multipath and interference.

Eurocontrol and FAA have jointly produced a roadmap document for future development of Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems, which is called the Communications Operating Concepts and Requirements (COCR) for Future Radio Systems (FRS) [1]. The document (COCR) is written as a general guideline, without taking into account any technological implementation. In this work we are interested in estimating the capacity requirements for a satellite system for ATM. The bit rate requirement per spot beam is determined using the same approach as in the COCR, with some parameters adjusted to fit in a satellite system scenario. Furthermore, the criticality of one particular service message, the A-EXEC, is verified by comparing the required bit rate when it is excluded from the computation. A condition when this criticality applies is also determined.