Airborne internet access through submarine optical fiber cables

Abstract

Internet access for passengers travelling in aircrafts is thought to be one of the unresolved major challenges for ubiquitous Internet provision. Vast oceanic remote regions along the busy air routes of the world require low-cost, reliable, and high-speed Internet for the aircraft. Satellite links can provide Internet coverage in such remote areas; however, their services are still costly with low bandwidth and longer delays. Fortunately, the submarine optical cables deployed across the oceans pass along the same busy air routes. These cables can be utilized as high-speed Internet backbone for wireless Internet access to the aircraft. Dedicated ships stationed along these submarine optical fiber cables can be exploited to provide Internet, security, and navigation services to aircrafts and ships. A novel architecture for such a ground/sea-to-air access network is proposed. A complete solution, design, and analysis of the proposed technique are thoroughly discussed. In contrast to the traditional land mobile radio cellular systems, the high speed of the aircraft results in reduced available handover time margins. To address the challenges related to the high-speed mobility of aircraft, an analysis for the impact of various parameters on the performance of handovers is presented. Using the proposed analytical model, a mathematical relation for the handover margin with the velocity of aircraft, direction of the aircraft’s motion, and propagation environment is derived on the basis of path-loss propagation model.