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5 Aeronautical Communications
Civil aviation provides a major source of transport for passengers, and for high-cost low
volume or perishable goods. For business travel air is the only viable means for journeys
exceeding 1000 km. The air transport regime is a highly competitive one, with pressures
increasing for greater efficiency and flexibility of operation. The market and the players
are global, margins are minimal, and mistakes are often costly and disastrous. On a
broader front an efficient air transport system is a vital determinant in the economic
prosperity and the exploitation of the resources of countries and of regions, generating
some £108 billion per annum of economic activity within the European Union. Future
estimates of aviation activity and knowledge of future plans are a pre-requisite to the
assessment for radio frequency spectrum. This chapter examines some of the key issues
concerning aeronautical radiocommunications.
5.1 Introduction
Aeronautical communication is an essential safety critical service providing a constant link
between pilots and controllers. Communication is also important for commercial data
related to airline operations and, increasingly, to the provision of services for passengers.
Aeronautical communication requirements are generally considered under the following
headings:
• Air Traffic Services (ATS): services to support air traffic control including direct
communication between controllers and pilots.
• Airline Operational Control (AOC): services involving data transfer between the
aircraft and the Airline Operational Centre or operational staff at the airport
associated with the safety and regularity of flights. The Airline Communications
Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) has supported this service since the
1980s. This is considered to be a growth area and airlines are expected to start
making increased use of datalink applications to provide communications at the
gate and airborne monitoring applications.
• Airline Administrative Communications (AAC): includes applications concerned
with administrative aspects of airline business such as crew rostering and cabin
provisioning. These are essential to the airlines business but do not impact on
the safety and regularity of flight. AAC applications are not specified by ICAO
and should not use communications resources reserved for safety
communications.
• Airline Passenger Correspondence (APC): includes communications services
that are offered to passengers (email, internet access and telephony). Access to
such services would be via seatback screens, airline provided equipment or
passengers own laptops or other mobile equipment. Services would be offered to
passengers within the ticket price or as a chargeable service.
For air traffic services, the existing technology is extremely simple, based in terrestrial
regions on voice communication over VHF DSB-AM radios with 25 kHz channelisation
and on HF voice technology in remote and oceanic regions. Although it is rare for any
particular channel to be highly utilised, the need for a channel to be assigned to each air
traffic controller and the coverage required for each channel has lead to saturation of the
VHF band. A key focus for this section is therefore on methods to alleviate the current
saturation of spectrum allocated to voice services whilst simultaneously increasing
spectrum efficiency. The following general methods are considered:
• The introduction of new air traffic management concepts which have inherently
lower requirement for communication.
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