Performance Study on Seamless DA2GC for Aircraft Passengers toward 5G

Mobile users seek ubiquitous broadband connectivity even during a flight above the clouds. As many passengers are expected to be connected to high-speed Internet, robust and high-capacity direct air-to-ground communication (DA2GC) to connect the aircraft with the ground cellular network is particularly attractive. In this article, we assess the capacity limitations of DA2GC links provided to an aircraft by employing currently available 4G radio technologies. Further, we study different capacity enhancement techniques toward 5G such as an implementation of Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) or coordinated beamsteering to improve DA2GC capacity. We also compare DA2GC performance with connectivity offered by satellites. According to our results, a DA2GC network extended with techniques toward 5G can increase the capacity available per aircraft by nearly 100 Mb/s in comparison with the 4G DA2GC network, assuming 20 MHz bandwidth is exploited. Although the maximum capacity provided by the 5G DA2GC network and satellite communication is the same, satellite communication exhibits only 40 Mb/s for 10000 deployed satellites on average. To motivate future investigation in this field, this article also outlines open challenges and research directions toward more efficient DA2GC.