3G Trials to Enhance Air Safety

EUROCONTROL, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, working with Roke Manor Research, has successfully completed 3G communications trials, involving QinetiQ's BAC1-11 research aircraft. During the trials, live video of activities in the cockpit and cabin were relayed to the ground station along with still photographs, which were taken with a web-cam. Simultaneously, a voice call was made while a passenger on the aircraft browsed the Internet and watched a video selected and streamed from a server on the ground.

The Siemens demonstrator used in the trials was built in 2000 by Roke Manor Research to enable on-board activity to be continually monitored for security purposes, giving passengers and crew increased confidence in the safety of air travel.

While it is already possible to transfer a limited amount of data between the air and ground today, 3G communications offers the prospect to exchange data at much higher rates in conjunction with voice communications. In addition to its application for security purposes, the benefits of this technology to increase capacity for air traffic management, and to provide airline operational and passenger services can be substantial.

Further activities are planned by the EUROCONTROL Agency in the near future, however, the deployment of operational systems is still some years away."

Posted to the site on 18th March 2002