FCS Technology Investigation Conclusions and Recommendations

1
FCS Technology InvestigationConclusions and
Recommendations

• Presented at ICAO ACP WGT Meeting,
• Montreal, Canada
• October, 2007
• Prepared by
• ITT Tricia Gilbert, Jenny Jin, Steve Henriksen
• QinetiQ Phil Platt
• NASA James Budinger

2
Overview

• Background
• Approach
• Evaluation Criteria
• Technology Screening
• Technology Studies
• Technology Evaluation
• Observations
• Conclusions and Recommendations

3
Background

• Under EUROCONTROL/FAA Action Plan 17 (AP17),
  Three themes for Future Communications Study
  (FCS)
• (1) Identification of requirements and operating
  concepts
• (2) Identification of enabling technologies
• (3) Development of a future communications
  roadmap
• Joint effort between US team (FAA, NASA, ITT) and
  European team (EUROCONTROL, France, Germany,
  Spain, Sweden, UK, and QinetiQ) focused on Theme
  2
• Technology investigation to identify candidate
  technologies

4
Approach
5
Approach U.S. and European Activity
6
Approach Assessment Methodology

• Step 2 Technology Assessment methodology
• Presented and updated with comments from European
  ACP participants with respect to proposed
  assessment criteria
• Two types emerged
• Essential
• these must be passed to be acceptable
• Desirable
• a set of criteria that help rank the candidate
  technologies against the key requirements
• Ranking
• Common technology description template

7
Approach ITT Methodology
8
Evaluation Criteria
9
Evaluation Criteria ITT
11 criteria traceable to the COCR and consensus
ICAO documents were derived in FCS Phase II
In FCS Phase III, criteria definitions and
associated metrics were revised to reflect
updates to the COCR and process diagrams to
define the evaluation steps were developed
10
Evaluation Criteria ITT Metrics
11
European Evaluation Criteria

• Essential Criteria (Step 2 Assessment)
• Spectrum Compatibility
• Openness of Standards
• Desirable Criteria
• RF Robustness
• Technical Readiness Level
• Flexibility
• Ground Infrastructure Cost
• Performance Criteria
• Capacity
• Integrity
• Availability
• Latency

12
Evaluation Criteria -- European Metrics

• Ranking was seen as the best way to compare
  technologies
• A simple scheme without involving complex scoring
  techniques
• 4 Classes have been defined each with an
  acceptance mask

Class 3
Class 4
13
Evaluation Criteria -- Comparison
14
Technology Screening
15
Technology Inventory

• Common Technology Inventory including input from
  NASA release of RFIs, inputs from ICAO WG-C (now
  WG-T) ACP members, and literature reviews

16
Common Technology Screening Results
17
Technology Studies
18
Detailed Technology Studies -- ITT
19
Detailed Technology Studies -- Europe

• Detailed technology studies were undertaken by
  various entities in Europe
• AMACS was progressed by DSNA (France) and LFV
  (Sweden). Support was provided by NATS/Helios on
  performance evaluation
• P34 (TIA-902) was investigated by NATS/Helios in
  terms of performance and compatibility
• B-AMC studies were funded by EUROCONTROL through
  the B-AMC Consortium to define the overall system
  including performance and compatibility
• Review of previous EUROCONTROL activity on WCDMA
• Drew on work carried out in the U.S. for LDL
• QinetiQ acted as an overall reviewer and applied
  the evaluation criteria and a critique of each
  system
• Produced the final conclusion in the Step 2 report

20
Technology Evaluations
21
U.S. Technology Evaluations

• Develop Concept of Use for the selected
  technologies (P34, LDL, WCDMA, B-AMC, AMACS)
• Each Concept of Use includes
• Applicable technology features/specifications
• Functional architecture
• Deployment concept for common evaluation
  scenarios
• Deployment frequency band and channelization
  considerations

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U.S. Technology Evaluations (2)

• Assess technologies using the process diagrams
  defined for each evaluation criterion

23
U.S. Technology Evaluations (3)
Weight/Rank Criteria (Applying AHP Process)
Rule Set
Qualitative Ranking
Quantitative Weights
24
U.S. Evaluation Results
Gray indicates insufficient information at the
time of evaluation
25
European Technology Evaluation AMACS

• Essential criteria
• Compatibility studies undertaken indicate that
  co-site interference may be overcome affected
  by duty cycle. Results inconclusive and requires
  further work
• Open standards it will be developed in an open
  manner - passed
• Desirable
• Robustness designed to have robust physical
  layer
• TRL 3 still at early stage of development
• Flexibility as several design options
• Ground costs expected to need more ground sites
  than VHF hence increased cost
• Performance meets most requirements in APT,
  TMA, ENR, and AOA.
• Air/air performance needs to be considered further

26
European Technology Evaluation B-AMC

• Essential criteria
• Compatibility considerable work undertaken and
  results show promise as an inlay system. However
  further work is recommended on the L-band
  interference models to confirm results -
  inconclusive
• Open standards - it will be developed in an open
  manner - passed
• Desirable
• Robustness design shows good robustness
• TRL 4 Considerable theoretical studies on the
  design draws on earlier B-VHF system
• Flexibility it can be deployed in several ways
• Ground costs estimated as similar to current
  system
• Performance meets all requirements in APT, TMA,
  ENR, and AOA
• Air/air performance seems OK but needs to be
  considered further

27
European Technology Evaluation LDL

• Essential criteria
• Compatibility similar to all other L-band
  interference studies. Results inconclusive and
  requires further work inconclusive.
• Open standards expected to be open standard -
  passed
• Desirable
• Robustness designed to be robust
• TRL 4. Draws on VDLM3 design
• Flexibility several data channel options
• Ground costs - estimated as similar to current
  system
• Performance not comprehensively simulated

28
European Technology Evaluation P34 (TIA-902)

• Essential criteria
• Compatibility - studies undertaken indicate that
  co-site interference may be overcome. Results
  inconclusive and requires further work
  inconclusive.
• Open standards patents apply to some standards
  but can either be overcome passed.
• Desirable
• Robustness designed to have good robustness
• TRL 3 although COTS changes are required
• Flexibility can be deployed with 3 channel
  bandwidths (50,100, 150 kHz)
• Ground costs - expected to need more ground sites
  than VHF hence increased cost
• Performance initial results indicate that
  throughput values can be achieved in small/medium
  en route airspace using 100/150kHz channels.
  Further work needed in other airspace volumes.

29
European Technology Evaluation WCDMA

• Essential criteria
• Compatibility requires 2x5 MHz clean portion
  of an increasing crowded band guard bands. Not
  practical to deploy based on information
  available
• Open standards
• Passed standards are available
• Desirable
• Robustness adequate robustness
• TRL 5 reasonably mature and can be deployed
  with little modification
• Flexibility design options were not finally
  chosen
• Ground costs similar cell size to those of VHF
  so similar costs
• Performance study showed that performance can
  be achieved but needs further validation.
  Different methodology was applied.
• Not recommended for the FCI due to difficulty in
  introduction into the L-band

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European Technology Evaluation INMARSAT SBB

• Essential criteria
• Compatibility
• Passed subject to planning meetings and adequate
  spectrum. Maybe an issue with Iridium
• Open standards not currently available but
  assumed would if offer to support ATS.
• Desirable
• Robustness currently not robust for ATS
  minimal link margin
• TRL 7 for ATS
• Flexibility some flexibility due options for
  channel rates with various antenna gains
• Ground costs not estimated
• Performance performance cannot be guaranteed
  due to lack of priority and pre-emption. Little
  performance information available - failed
• SBB will reach the end of its lifetime around
  2020
• Not recommended for the FCI

31
European Technology Evaluation IEEE 802.16e

• Essential criteria
• Compatibility introduced into an under utilised
  band so compatibility is expected
• Open standards open standards available.
  Aviation specific variant needed
• Desirable
• Robustness good robustness with QoS management
• TRL 6 mature as WiMAX but need tailoring to
  aviation use
• Flexibility many design options
• Ground costs not currently covered by VHF
  systems
• Performance studies showed that performance can
  be achieved. Needs further validation through
  practical trials

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European Evaluation Results
33
European Evaluation Results (2)

• Two technologies have been removed from further
  consideration
• SBB
• Does not meet performance requirements
• Satellite will reach the end of life by 2020
• WCDMA
• Need for large clean bands in L-Band makes it
  impractical to deploy
• New Satellite Systems
• They have not been evaluated due lack of maturity
• However, emerging systems have been identified
  that could be considered as part of the FCI

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Observations
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Observations General

• The FCI must support ATS and AOC end-to-end
  communications including air/ground and air/air
• New communication components of the FCI will be
  supporting primarily data communications
• No single technology meets all requirements
  across all operational flight domains
• To meet the diverse range of communications the
  FCI will be a system of systems comprising the
  minimum number of technologies required to meet
  the operational requirements
• No COTS technologies have been identified that
  can be adopted as new components of the FCI
  without some modification
• However, reuse of emerging technology and
  standards should be considered to the maximum
  extent possible to reduce risk and shorten
  development time

36
Observations VHF Band

• VHF Band
• Existing technologies providing dedicated voice
  and data services will be used to their fullest
  extent
• Due to current/planned technologies in the VHF
  band future communication services outside the
  VHF band must be considered but a long-term
  strategy for VHF should also be addressed
• The new communication components introduced into
  the FCI will reuse emerging technology and
  standards to the maximum extent possible.

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Observations Aeronautical L-band (1)

• The aeronautical L-band spectrum is a candidate
  band for supporting a new data link communication
  capability
• This spectrum provides an opportunity to support
  objectives for future global communication
  systems however no evaluated technology in
  L-band (as defined) fully addresses all
  requirements and limitations of the operating
  environment
• No one evaluated technology meets all
  requirements for the defined data link instead,
  technology options for an L-band Digital
  Aeronautical Communication System (L-DACS) have
  been defined based on evaluations drawing on
  features of evaluated systems
• High-level evaluation of economic feasibility of
  implementing a L-band ground infrastructure
  indicates a positive business case can be achieved

38
Observations Aeronautical L-band (2)

• Desirable features for an aeronautical L-band
  (960-1024 1164 MHz) technology include
• Existing standard for safety application with
  some validation work performed
• Multi-carrier modulation (power efficient
  modulation for the aeronautical L-band fading
  environment)
• Low duty cycle waveform with narrow-to-broadband
  channels (more likely to achieve successful
  compatibility with legacy L-band systems without
  clearing spectrum)
• Adaptable/scalable features (improving
  flexibility in deployment and implementation, and
  adaptability to accommodate future demands)
• Native mobility management and native IP
  interface (increasing flexibility and providing
  critical upper layers compatibility with
  worldwide data networking standards)

39
Observations Aeronautical L-band (3)

• Two options for a L-band Digital Aeronautical
  Communication System (L-DACS) were identified

40
Observations C-band and Satellite

• Aeronautical C-band 5000 to 5010 MHz, and/or
  5010 to 5030 MHz, and/or 5091 to 5150 MHz
• There is capacity not utilized given path loss
  constraints, this band is most applicable to
  airport surface use where communication distances
  are short
• 802.16e is well matched to the aeronautical
  surface specific to aeronautical C-band in terms
  of capability and performance
• Aeronautical satellite systems can be applied to
  large and/or remote geographic areas to provide
  supplemental coverage to the terrestrial
  communication infrastructure
• Monitoring of specific satellite service
  offerings/emerging requirements to determine need
  for common global system is on-going

41
Observations Applicability of Technologies

• The foregoing observations can be summarized to
  indicate the applicability of technologies
  against airspace type

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Recommendations
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Recommendations C-band

• Identify the portions of the IEEE 802.16e
  standard best suited for airport surface wireless
  mobile communications, identify and develop
  missing required functionalities and propose an
  aviation specific standard to appropriate
  standardisation bodies
• Evaluate and validate the performance of aviation
  specific standard wireless mobile communications
  networks operating in the relevant airport
  surface environments through trials and test bed
  development
• Propose a channelisation methodology for
  allocation of safety and regularity of flight
  services in the band to accommodate a range of
  airport classes, configurations and operational
  requirements
• Complete the investigation of compatibility of
  prototyped C-band components with existing
  systems in the C-band in the airport surface
  environment and interference with others users of
  the band

44
Recommendations Satellite Band

• Continue monitoring the satellite system
  developments and assessment of specific technical
  solutions to be offered in the timeframe defined
  in the COCR as these next generation satellite
  systems become better defined
• Update existing AMS(R)S SARPs performance
  requirements to meet future requirements
• In order to support the new AMS(R)S SARPs,
  consider the development of a globally applicable
  air interface standard for satellite systems
  supporting only safety related communications

45
Recommendations VHF Band

• In the long term reconsider the potential use of
  the VHF for new technologies when sufficient
  spectrum becomes available to support all or part
  of the requirements

46
Recommendations L-band (1)

• Define interference test requirements and
  associated outputs that can be used to determine
  compatibility of future candidate aeronautical
  communication technologies with existing
  aeronautical L-band systems
• Pursue detailed compatibility assessment of
  candidate physical layers for an L-band
  aeronautical digital link, including interference
  testing
• Pursue definition/validation of technology that
  is derived or adapted from existing standards for
  use as an L-band Data-link Aeronautical
  Communications System (L-DACS) that can be used
  to initiate an aeronautical standardization
  effort (and meet ICAO requirements for such an
  effort)

47
Recommendations L-band (2)

• Complete the investigation of compatibility of
  prototyped L-DACS components with existing
  systems in the L-band particularly with regard to
  the onboard co-site interference and agree on the
  overall design characteristics
• Considering the design trade-offs, propose the
  appropriate L-DACS solution for input to a global
  aeronautical standardisation activity
• Considering that B-AMC, AMACS and TIA-902 (P34)
  have provisions to support air to air services,
  conduct further investigation of this capability
  as a possible component of L-DACS