Aviation

Air travel is predicted to grow over the coming decades. Airports use an abundance of wireless technologies to connect passengers, devices, safety-critical systems, and aircraft. 

Operationally, airports use three types of communication systems: ground communications for controlling operations, ground to air communications for managing airspace and radars for monitoring en route operations. 

Ground communications frequently rely on emerging technologies like LTE and 5G which feature increased data rates. But airports continue to use other radio technologies like VHF/UHF, Wi-Fi, telemetry, and TETRA. These networks must work seamlessly to ensure the airport operates safely and securely.

Equally, air traffic controllers need to ensure that ground-to-ground communications are compatible with their ground-to-air services and do not interfere with other service users. Ground to air communications uses a variety of technologies including radar, UHF/VHF and HF. Common functions of ATC radars include enroute radar systems, air surveillance, surface movement and weather radars. ATDI supports leading ATC operators around the world.

HTZ offers dedicated functions for the aviation sector including:

• Technology-neutral solution which can be used for almost every wireless technology;
• A full geographic dataset to model networks and interference within the airport environment;
• Automated coverage planning function to reduce network design and deployment processing times;
• Dedicated aeronautical propagation models;
• Frequency planning and interference analysis features prior to deployment;
• Traffic analysis and network capacity management;
• Automation of site planning, optimisation and frequency planning;
• Features surveillance functions including multi-lateration (TDOA);
• Model ATC radars (VOR, ILS, MLAT, RADAR);
• Manage the impact of wind turbine interference or 5G towers on aeronautical radars;
• ICAO building restriction compliance, limiting how buildings encroach on airspace;
• Point to point / Point to Multipoint link analysis (DL and UL);
• Coordination for FM/VHF/UHF and other wireless technologies.

This tutorial looks at the interaction between 5G towers and radio altimeters on aircraft.
The tutorial calculates the exclusion zone needed around the airport to enable MNOs to decide where to deploy 5G towers.

Check out our Blog on microwave links versus flight altitude analysis.