Spectrum and Capacity Analysis for Air/Ground Air Traffic Management Communications

The Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) of the MITRE Corporation, in conjunction with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), performed a study to analyze the future capacity and spectrum requirements for air/ground aeronautical mobile communications. The first part of the study assessed the demand for air/ground voice channels needed to meet the forecasted growth and distribution of air traffic in the National Airspace System (NAS) in the next decade. The next part of the study determined how many voice channels could be cleared for potential new and expanded aeronautical data communications use and the impact of subband-clearing on the ability of the remaining capacity of the voice system to support future requirements. The final part of the study estimated the number of frequencies and ground radio sites that will be needed to support various levels of future data communications services. This paper presents the details of the study and describes the ability of the FAA's current and planned communications infrastructure to meet the requirements of performance-based air traffic management and NextGen communications using the available very high frequency (VHF) spectrum and current technologies.