Final results of simulations of an aeronautical telecommunications network for ground to ground subnet applications

This paper presents the final results of a simulation for an aeronautical telecommunications network (ATN) subnet for aeronautical fixed services based on the operational concept as describe the ICAO recommendations, and the actual operational requirements defined for the CAA in Colombia, using OPNET software tools. Special emphasis is given to the different ground to ground applications like AMHS and AIDC for the actual and projected requirements in a mid-term basis taking into account the actual and future air-traffic conditions of the country and the local planning of CNS/ATM development. The model used a protocol stack according to the ICAO recommendations and also well know standards used today in the telecommunications industry. The paper shows the design and modeling of the network and summarizes the methodological process used for conduct the simulation study, defining key aspects of the network like bandwidth utilization, rate of sent, receive and lost packets, overall and peak throughput, delays, queues and servers utilization in order to reach conclusions. In the simulation that was performed it includes a sort of different scenarios in order to simulate a variety of operational profiles to represent light, medium and heavy air traffic conditions. Finally, this paper gives the final results of the simulation process, further conclusions are shown and the future work is established.