The growing demand for aeronautical telecommunication capacity presents a difficult challenge. Airborne networking represents an approach that promises large data transmission capacity over large distances. The concept has been evaluated with regard to aspects like connectivity, traffic load distribution, packet queuing and time delay. In a network in which various aircraft act as cross-connect for the larger network, however, the aggregated data traffic may necessitate photonic “backbone” links to be able to handle future internet traffic loads. The objective of this work is to evaluate the scaling properties of communication link requirements, i.e. the capacity and range, with respect to time-varying aircraft density. The analysis of this paper is based on a scenario-based model of the North Atlantic air traffic, using a global flight schedule database.     «

The growing demand for aeronautical telecommunication capacity presents a difficult challenge. Airborne networking represents an approach that promises large data transmission capacity over large distances. The concept has been evaluated with regard to aspects like connectivity, traffic load distribution, packet queuing and time delay. In a network in which various aircraft act as cross-connect for the larger network, however, the aggregated data traffic may necessitate photonic “backbone” links...     »