Wireless Connectivity in Airplanes: Challenges and the Case for UWB

Wireless solutions for on-board communications are gaining momentum in the aerospace industry with the aim to further improve flight safety, reduce aircraft costs, and lower environmental impact. Also passenger infotainment services are increasingly realized in a wireless way and call for high-rate connectivity to the Internet. There are many issues though, including security, coexistence, and power sustainability. We argue that ultra-wideband (UWB) technology is a promising implementation path for such intra-aircaft communications. From a power sustainability perspective, UWB attains a unique trade-off between power consumption and data rate that can become a key enabler. Experimental results from a proof-of-concept deployment of off-the-shelf UWB transceivers in an Airbus A319 support our discussion and shed light on the challenges ahead.