Optimisations in aeronautical communications using aircrafts as relays

Abstract

The airline industry has seen a tremendous growth in the global air traffic over the past few years and studies forecast this rapid growth to sustain in the future as well. This has led to multiple challenges for the smooth operation and management of air traffic all around the world. For instance, the currently deployed air-ground communication systems are forecast to reach their capacity limits in the next few years. The International Civil Aviation Organization has thereby initiated numerous projects to develop new technologies for the next-generation of air-ground communication systems. In this paper, we investigate use of relaying technique for air-ground communication wherein intermediate aircrafts are used to relay (receive and forward) the communication signals from other aircrafts to the ground stations. We aim to exploit the strengths of the air-air communication channels to aid the communication in the air-ground channels. We propose the usage of aircrafts which are nearer to the ground station for relaying messages of aircrafts located further away to improve the quality of communication. Our simulation results show that this can enable higher data rates and reduce the overall power consumption when compared with the direct air-ground communication technique that is currently used.