Fiber-Wireless cabin mobile communications on civil Aircraft

Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) benefits the wireless communications system with high capacity and lower transmission power. In this paper, FiWi is deployed in the Cabin for Mobile Communications on Aircraft (MCA). Due to the tunnel-shape of the cabin, the traditional scheme with multiple Access Points (AP) connected on data-bus suffers from the transmission power restriction and multipath fading. However, with FiWi, the analog signals received by different APs can be transmitted by the fiber optical signal and directly combined together before the final demodulation. Additionally, the diversity gain is obtained because APs of FiWi network can directly modulate the received wireless signal on the passive optical fiber to extend the service area of the onboard base-station or hub. Moreover, compared with the traditional multiple APs on data-bus, the interference is mitigated and the capacity is increased in the proposed system. Especially, when Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) transmission is utilized, i.e. IEEE802.11n, the correlation of the antennas is decreased and the capacity of the communication system is maintained. In this paper, the FiWi cabin network architecture is proposed and analyzed. The channel and network models are established and optimized. The resources allocation scheme is also highlighted. The simulation confirms the validity and efficiency of the proposed fiber wireless cabin mobile communications on civil aircraft.

[1]  Allen Taflove,et al.  Application of the Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method to Sinusoidal Steady-State Electromagnetic-Penetration Problems , 1980, IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility.

[2]  J.E. Mazo,et al.  Digital communications , 1985, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[3]  Toshio Nojima,et al.  Numerical estimation of the electric field distributions due to mobile radio in an aircraft cabin based on large scale FDTD analysis , 2011, 10th International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility.

[4]  Christian Fraboul,et al.  A Probabilistic Analysis of End-To-End Delays on an AFDX Avionic Network , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

[5]  Fredrik Tufvesson,et al.  Characterization of a Computer Board-to-Board Ultra-Wideband Channel , 2007, IEEE Communications Letters.

[6]  Chao Zhang,et al.  Resources allocation in mobile communications on aircraft , 2011, 2011 International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP).

[7]  Reuben A. Farrugia,et al.  Wireless propagation modelling inside a business jet , 2009, IEEE EUROCON 2009.

[8]  Shyh-Kang Jeng,et al.  An SBR/image approach for radio wave propagation in indoor environments with metallic furniture , 1997 .

[9]  Martin Maier,et al.  Fiber-wireless (FiWi) access networks: A survey , 2009, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[10]  M. Holzbock.  WirelessCabin - Development and Demonstrator of Wireless Access for Multimedia Services in Aircraft Cabins , 2003 .

[11]  C.P. Njebla.  Topology and capacity planning for wireless heterogeneous networks in aircraft cabins , 2005, 2005 IEEE 16th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

[12]  Martin Maier,et al.  Fiber-wireless (FiWi) access networks: Challenges and opportunities , 2011, IEEE Network.

[13]  Cristina Parraga Niebla.  Topology and capacity planning for wireless heterogeneous networks in aircraft cabins , 2005, PIMRC.

[14]  Chao Zhang,et al.  Real-time aircraft cabin channel modeling , 2011, 2011 IEEE 13th International Conference on Communication Technology.

[15]  K. Yee.  Numerical solution of initial boundary value problems involving maxwell's equations in isotropic media , 1966 .