B-VHF – A Multi-Carrier Broadband Communications Concept for Air Traffic Management in the VHF Band

In this paper we describe an European initiative aiming to establish a broadband Very High Frequency (VHF) aeronautical communications system based on a multi-carrier technology and demonstrate its benefits to the aeronautical community, together with its technological fundamentals. The European research project B-VHF (“Broadband VHF Aeronautical Communications System based on Multi-Carrier Techniques”) is funded by the European Commission within the 6 Framework Program and has started in January 2004. The project deals with the investigation, design, and evaluation of a broadband overlay communications system for Air Traffic Control (ATC) and Air Traffic Management (ATM) communications in the VHF band. The proposed transmission technique, which permits the parallel operation with the current AM system, is called Multi-Carrier Code-Division Multiple-Access (MC-CDMA.