G2A Communication Systems: A Survey on Evolving Enabling Technologies, Technical Challenges and Research Directions

The growing demand of efficient and failure less air-ground communication system in civil aviation has led to gradual improvement in various long-range (Beyond Line-of-Sight) and short-range (Line-of-Sight) communication systems. Ground-to-Air (G2A) communication system is a vast area of communication which deals with huge infrastructures involving varieties of systems and technologies. It has been grown to quite a mature technology by now by the help of various research and development along with related industrial revolutions. There have been several developments in air to ground communication; from effective use of limited spectrum to adaption of advanced modulation and green energy powering techniques. This research article is an extensive study based survey on existing technological development in the G2A communication system of civil aviation. It presents an explicit discussion on the issues, requirements and development in different aspects of air-to-ground communication systems starting from the time of world war-I to till now in a comprehensive manner. It also explains in details about the budding technological development, future scope, challenges and potential research directions in the system. This paper is aimed at increasing researchers’ understanding on this vast and emerging area of research, as well as find new research challenges in the constituent domains of G2A communication systems.