Tracking Multiple Airborne 802.11b Wireless Local Area Networks to Extend the Internet to Aircrafts in Flight

Abstract

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) enable the extension of the Internet to aircrafts in flight. To establish this wireless network segment, commercial-of-the-shelve (COTS) 802.11b wireless Ethernet bridges were used. Wireless Ethernet bridges were chosen over optical wireless technology and Internet protocol (IP) satellite modems mainly because of their lower costs, ease and flexibility of implementation. Additionally, 802.11b wireless networks allow a wide range of mobile data devices such as laptop computers and personal digital assistance high-speed wireless access to critical information and applications resided on the aircrafts networks. Since 802.11b WLAN media is shared and traffic generated by other users will degrade the overall performance of the network. With the continual wide spread use of 802.11b WLAN, an aircraft in flight will experience network congestions and poor performance across all the frequency channels. The congestion and poor performance issues can be minimized by tracking the airborne wireless LAN using highly directional antenna and RF filtering. The method of tracking multiple 802.11 wirelesses LAN and the RF subsystem will be described. The applications of 802.11b wireless networks to man and unmanned aircrafts flight research will be discussed.