Dual-band Air-Ground Radio Performance: Example Flight Test Results | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore

Dual-band Air-Ground Radio Performance: Example Flight Test Results


Abstract:

We recently concluded a four-year University Leadership Initiative (ULI) project sponsored by NASA, which investigated multiple aviation communications technology areas a...Show More

Abstract:

We recently concluded a four-year University Leadership Initiative (ULI) project sponsored by NASA, which investigated multiple aviation communications technology areas aimed at enhancing future aviation safety. These areas were dual-band air-ground communications for air traffic management, detection and interdiction of small drones, and high-capacity terrestrial airport communications networking. In this paper we report on flight test results of our dual-band radios. These radios were designed to use a spectrally efficient multi-carrier modulation, filterbank multicarrier (FBMC), which we had previously shown to improve resilience to high-power distance measurement equipment (DME) adjacent-channel interference, in comparison to existing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) schemes. In our NASA project, we designed the FBMC radios to extend performance even further, using the following techniques: (i) simultaneous dual-band transmission and reception; (ii) ground station (GS) spatial diversity; (iii) higher-order modulation for a factor of 5 capacity increase over QPSK; (iv) a Doppler-resilient option using a smaller number of subcarriers; and, (v) 5-MHz bandwidth C-band transmissions for an order of magnitude capacity increase over existing 500-kHz channel schemes. To our knowledge, these are novel achievements for civil aviation, and our flight test results attained a technology readiness level (TRL) of 5. In this paper we briefly describe the project history, in which we spent approximately one year working with Boeing to participate in one of their Eco-Demonstrator flight trials, and obtained special temporary authorizations to transmit in both the L-band and C-band, from the FAA, the FCC, and the DoD. When COVID-19 dispersed worldwide, Boeing was no longer able to support us, so we revised our plans and teamed with the South Carolina Civil Air Patrol (SC CAP) to conduct smaller-scale flight tests. This paper summarizes the radio designs and the no...
Date of Conference: 18-20 April 2023
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 15 May 2023
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Conference Location: Herndon, VA, USA

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