Aviation Safety Service IPV6 Based Air-To-Ground Communication: Multi-Homing Challenges

Currently European Airspace is using the ATN/OSI and ACARS protocols for the air-to-ground communication and the US is using the ACARS protocol. There is a big movement in the US national airspace and European airspace to move the airplane air-to-ground safety service communication to the Internet based protocol, using Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) from existing ACARS and ATN/OSI. An airplane is essentially an IPv6 mobile node equipped with multiple air-to-ground radio technology interfaces that connect to several access network providers and it moves from one access network to another. These network interfaces have different access technologies for both terrestrial and satellite communication (VHF, HFR, SATCOM etc...). Different requirements of different applications can result in different preferences of the interface or air to ground communication means that should be used. Network connections should be placed in the best possible interface or radio links based on specific safety or performance requirements. To make a seamless handover among the heterogeneous radio links and associated access network technology, the optimization of the air-to-ground radio links, and optimal selection of interfaces are the challenging issues for Aviation safety service IPv6 air-to-ground networks. In this paper we explore the challenges and motivations of multi-homing. This review is critical because multi-homing remains the main difficult problem or obstacle to aviation IPv6 deployment in the mission-critical environment. We also present the architectural goals and system design.