Modelling of the Wireless Propagation Characteristics inside Aircraft

Advances in wireless communications technology and more sophisticated portable devices have led to a drastic increase in wireless services and applications. This advancement was made possible through hardware improvements which allow more functions to be implemented in smaller sized devices. The demand for more wireless services has pushed the industry and the research community to increase the communication data rates, connectivity, and availability. The increase in the user base has also brought a decrease in the cost of the services. Although wireless access is becoming available in all public places around the world, this is still not the case for the air passengers who are cut off from wireless services during the duration of the flight. Deployment of wireless technology inside aircraft is still a hot issue due to uncertainties related to interference. Yet, the European Commission has prepared the legal framework for wireless connectivity inside aircraft in April 2008 (Commission, 2008). Aircraft manufacturers will benefit from this technology by exploiting wireless networks to reduce the cable complexity, hence the weight of the aircraft, and by providing new in-flight services, such as online passenger meal selection, service request and video on demand. On the other hand, provisioning of wireless service during flight would profit passengers, since they gain seamless access to common wireless services, such as phone, Internet, and multimedia communications. A wireless network can always be designed using a measurement campaign, whereby transmitters are placed in strategic locations inside the aircraft and measurements are taken at all points inside the aircraft. This solution is very expensive and requires repetitive readings to measure the propagation losses at all the frequencies lying within the frequency band of interest. These measurements have to be done on all the aircraft models and for every different furniture configuration. While the latter is not much of concern in commercial aircrafts, since these are quite similar in terms of furniture location, this creates a sensible issue in the business jet market, where each aircraft’s configuration is tailor-made for the customer. With such requirements, it is not possible to find the ideal antenna locations using measurement techniques. This calls for the development of an accurate computer model that can estimate the propagation characteristics inside any aircraft. This model must be capable of estimating the power level that can be received at any point inside the enclosed structure, thus creating a