Inflight Broadband Connectivity Using Cellular Networks

After three decades from the public debut of cellular networks, there are hardly parts of populated lands where cellular coverage is absent. Day after day, mobile users have been provided with wider range of services at higher speed. Today, long terminal evolution (LTE) networks support broadband connectivity for users moving as fast as 350km/h, and the support for speeds up to 500km/h is under consideration. Unfortunately, none of these efforts were aimed at airborne travelers due to the lack of aerial coverage. Provided that 5G networks are meant to provide anywhere and anytime connectivity for anyone, many operators are providing the free onboard Wi-Fi through proprietary terrestrial networks or satellite links. Unfortunately, both of these solutions have serious drawbacks, where the latter provides very limited speed, and the former is expensive and unscalable. In this paper, we discuss the technical possibilities of enhancing the existing LTE infrastructure for air to ground communications. We identify the major challenges and obstacles in this path, such as uplink/downlink interferences, frequent roaming, large Doppler effect, and channel degradation. We also discuss appropriate solutions to counteract them using some of the emerging antenna, signal processing, beamforming, and multi-beaming ideas.