Air-ground service integration for future aeronautical communication using SOA

Building on the SESAR SWIM (Single European Sky ATM Research System Wide Information Management) concept for information fusion and dissemination for ground-to-ground service integration, the EU FP7 project SANDRA (Seamless Aeronautical Networking through integration of Data-Links, Radios and Antennas) extends the ideology of SWIM to cover air-to-ground information exchange, service composition and integration to provide a complete and coherent set of communication services for NextGen global Air Traffic Management (ATM). In this paper, a possible airborne middleware architecture in SANDRA is defined based on SWIM, aiming at the interoperation with the ground systems utilising the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). To define the airborne middleware architecture, the air-ground information exchange scenarios, message exchange patterns and interactions between the airborne and ground middleware are analysed. Focusing on the SWIM ATM added-value services, data access services and technical services, the air-ground service integration design are eventually defined through the identification of a set of integrated airborne/ground business processes and categories.