Integration and Management of Multiple Radios in Satellite-Terrestrial based Aeronautical Communication Networks

The Single European Sky Air Traffic Management (ATM) research programme SESAR has identified continued growth in demand for aircraft communications as air traffic increases and communications become more network centric. Alongside existing systems such as VHF Data Link Mode 2, new systems such as LDACS and AeroMACS are being proposed along with satellite communications. This growth is likely to increase the size, weight and cost of avionics radio communication equipment, so there is a need to examine new radio architectures which will help limit these increases. The EU project SANDRA aims to design and demonstrate an integrated communications system using software defined radio techniques. In this paper, the concepts behind the integrated communications system are described, including improved modularity using high-speed digital links, security, redundancy and certification. The specific requirements of the integrated radio and the details of the proof-of-concept demonstrator are also outlined. This paper also presents a Collaborative Radio Resource Management (CRRM) scheme to support seamless aeronautical communications using satellite and terrestrial access technologies. The CRRM adopts and extends the IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover (MIH) framework and the ETSI Broadband Satellite Multimedia (BSM) SI-SAP concept to split the CRRM functions between the upper layers (layer 3 and above) and the lower layers (link layer and physical layer) of an aircraft terminal. A Joint Radio Resource Manager (JRRM) provides the abstraction layer for mapping higher layer functions into lower layer functions to enable collaboration. The CRRM scheme and its associated general signalling procedures are described in detail. Through the CRRM scheme, the connection establishment functions and seamless handovers between different radio technologies are performed by combining MIH primitives and BSM primitives.