LTE performance in the airport surface area channel

Wireless networking is coming to the airport surface environment in the near future. This will begin with the Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communication System (AeroMACS), deployed in the 5 GHz MLS Extension (E-MLS) band, from 5.091-5.15 GHz. The AeroMACS system is based upon the IEEE's 802.16e wireless networking standard, customized for the airport surface by the RTCA's special committee SC-223. The implemented subset of 802.16 technologies is conventionally known as WiMAX. The primary competitor to WiMAX is the Third Generation Partnership Project's Long Term Evolution (LTE) standards. The LTE and WiMAX standards share much in common, but LTE's initial release is typically regarded as being superior to WiMAX in terms of multiple performance criteria. In this work, we explore the performance of LTE in the airport surface environment, using measurement-based models for the airport surface channel. Our results employ a sophisticated LTE simulator along with the empirical channel models. We provide results in terms of error probability, spectral efficiency, and throughput for several multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) antenna modes of operation. The MIMO modes we employ include 1 × 2 receiver diversity, 2 × 1 space-frequency coding for transmit diversity, and 2×2 spatial multiplexing, all in comparison to conventional (1×1) processing. Multiple modulation formats are also employed. We investigate performance in several channel conditions (line of sight, obstructed), and include correlations among the MIMO channels to make results realistic. Our results can be viewed as numerical benchmarks for AeroMACS, and also show the very attractive performance attainable with LTE.