Data communication with aircraft presents unique technical challenges and these challenges are more pronounced when the aircraft are travelling over oceanic or other remote areas. When in populated areas, systems are available that can support high speed data services, one Gigabit per second (Gbps) and beyond via, terrestrial ground stations. However no such systems exist to provide airborne communications with high bandwidths among aircraft and between aircraft and the ground in more remote regions. Passengers will expect data service on the aircraft similar to what they typically experience on the ground. Multimedia activities, such as video streaming, are very bandwidth intensive and the provision of these services presents a serious technical challenge. On the ground, fibre optic cables are the method of choice for the provision of high speed data service, and in contrast, an airborne high speed data communications solution will need to be a wireless one.
Performance analysis of cellular CDMA high-speed data services
