Delivering Broadband To The Aircraft - Page 1 of 3

Not so long ago, the highlights of an in-flight experience were prepackaged meal, the drink trolley and a few magazines. With luck, there may have been an in-flight movie. Now hunger for entertainment and connectivity is driving development of cabin communications based on broadband satellite services.
Today, passengers want audio and video content. They would like Internet and e-mail. A leading desire, it seems, is the ability to pick up one’s own mobile phone to tell friends and family: “I’m on the plane!” This demand for connectivity with the outside world is driven by expectations created at home and in the office, and business aircraft, especially, suck in cascades of data to provide high-flying occupants with such goodies as streaming video, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and high-speed Internet access. Passing large amounts of data requires a broad data pipe, and for aircraft flying significant distances, that means broadband satellite communications.
The industry took a hit when Boeing terminated its Connexion broadband venture following disappointing market uptake, but interest continues to increase for such services from suppliers like Arinc, Inmarsat and OnAir, as well as several equipment manufacturers. There also are other suppliers of high-bandwidth services that operate, like Connexion, in Ku-band, such as SKYLink from Arinc Direct. There is no doubt that Ku-band systems have the edge when it comes to high-bandwidth, always-on connectivity, although such capability comes at a price.
Meanwhile Inmarsat, whose generations of L-band geostationary satellites have been a key foundation for aeronautical satellite communications services, is catching up on Ku-band with its fourth-generation I-4 satellites. A pair of spacecraft — one over the Atlantic Ocean and one over the Indian Ocean — provide connection speeds of up to 432 kilobits per second (kbps), and once a third satellite is orbited over the Pacific, only the polar regions will be outside the service’s reach. The I-4s provide 228 narrow spot beams that will be the backbone of Inmarsat’s broadband services, including the aeronautical SwiftBroadband due to be rolled out this year. In addition, the new satellites provide 19 wide beams to support existing Swift64 Aero services and, as with previous generations, a background global beam provides low-data-rate coverage over a still wider area to support a low-cost voice service.
The latest Inmarsat system is Internet protocol (IP)-based, opening up the possibility of many new applications, and uses packet data to deliver always-on connectivity. Mobile packet data service is an affordable solution for modest amounts of data transfer, as it is billed by the megabit and not by connection time. As well as facilitating e-mail, Internet access and voice communication, always-on connectivity can support live TV and videoconferencing, along with aircraft-related technical services such as weather and chart updating, remote monitoring of onboard systems and telemedicine. Voice and data can be handled concurrently. Effectively, aircraft can become airborne extensions of the terrestrial networks that many organizations now rely upon.
Inmarsat provides Internet connectivity, mainly to business and corporate travellers, with its Swift64 service. This service offers speeds of up to 64 kbps per channel using the wide beams on the I-3 and I-4 satellites. Channels can be operated in combination to provide speeds of up to 256 kbps per Swift64 terminal, with data compression and acceleration further boosting the effective data rate. Nevertheless, there may be a good case for upgrading to SwiftBroadband. Inmarsat has hinted that the cost of accessing the Internet over the new network will be less than users pay now with Swift64, and customers wanting still higher speeds will be able to access rates up to 864 kbps by acquiring terminals that combine two SwiftBroadband channels.
In the Asia-Pacific region Japan’s Multifunction Transport Satellite (MTSat) provides an alternative to Inmarsat. The satellite, placed into orbit in February 2005, also uses spot beams for high-bandwidth coverage. Avionics original equipment manufacturers are making it possible to use both systems. Honeywell, for example, has issued instructions to guide would-be MTSat users who use Honeywell’s satellite communications terminals how to amend the stored Owner Requirements Tables to include the MTSat ground station at Kobe, Japan.