Aloke Roy

Secure aircraft communications addressing and reporting system (ACARS)

With the increase in automation, airlines, military, and civil aviation organizations are relying on ACARS for air traffic and operational control. This paper proposes specific techniques to relieve ACARS frequency saturation using standard data compression algorithm. Additional solutions are provided to encrypt the ACARS protocol header without requiring any changes to the legacy ACARS equipment. The proposed Secure ACARS solutions will satisfy customer needs, improve the safety and reliability of the ACARS system and extend the usability of ACARS by conserving RF resources.

UAS industry growth: Forecasting impact on regional infrastructure, environment, and economy

A key requirement in preparing for a growing UAS industry and for the integration of unmanned vehicles into the US national airspace, is a method for clear and specific forecasting. We must know what types of operations are being performed, where they will occur, and what types of vehicles will be used. Current demand forecast models are not tightly coupled to the real purpose of the mission requirements (e.g. in terms the real locations of physical structures such as windmills to inspect, farms to survey, pipelines to patrol, etc.). To this end, Mosaic ATM under NASA guidance, is developing a crowd-sourced demand forecast engine for commercial and government organizational users to draw upon and share vetted and accurate projection data, and extend that data to evaluate associated impacts. The UAS Demand Generator for Discrete Airspace Density (UAXPAN) project combines forecast data from disparate sources in a common data format, and uses these to present a solid basis for demand forecasts. This specific, data-driven forecasting is crucial to understanding the impacts of a growing UAS industry on regional infrastructure, environment, and economy.

A crowd-sourcing approach for forecasting UAS demand and resource utilization

A key component to solving many of the engineering challenges for integrating UAS into the National Airspace System (NAS) is being able to state within discrete airspace, the numbers of forecasted UAS by airframe type and the type of mission or operational use being performed.In general, there is not a demand forecast that is tightly coupled to the real purpose of the mission requirements (e.g. in terms the real locations of physical structures such as windmills to inspect, farms to survey, pipelines to patrol, etc.). Being able to present a solid basis for the demand is crucial to get the attention of investment, government and other fiscal planners. To this end, Mosaic ATM under a NASA guidance is preparing a crowd sourced, demand forecast engine for commercial and government organizational users to drawn upon and be able to share vetted and accurate projection data. The UAS Demand Generator for Discrete Airspace Density (UAXPAN) project creates a common solution in forecasting the growth and use of numerous unmanned systems and numerous mission types. Users of the system can produce datadriven forecasts of UA usage patterns, and use plugin application solvers to further their analysis of the results (e.g., predicting cellular communications link demand).

Aircraft installation & operational aspects of the Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communications System (AeroMACS)

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an analysis done at Honeywell on the electromagnetic compatibility issues of installing an AeroMACS (Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communications System) Radio on aircraft equipped with other on-board Communications, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) radios. This paper describes a typical aircraft radio frequency interference environment, analyzes the effect of the AeroMACS transmitter on other onboard receivers and the effect of other onboard transmitters on the AeroMACS receiver and summarizes the isolation requirements for installing AeroMACS radios on Aircraft.

Cyber safety and security for reduced crew operations (RCO)

Presents a collection of slides covering the following topics: aircraft safety; reduced crew operations; aircraft data communications; ground communications; and cryptography.

Crowd sourcing approach for UAS communication resource demand forecasting

Congressional attention to Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)1 has caused the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to move the National Airspace System (NAS) Integration project forward, but using guidelines, practices and procedures that are yet to be fully integrated with the FAA Aviation Management System. The real drive for change in the NAS will to come from both UAS operators and the government jointly seeing an accurate forecast of UAS usage demand data. This solid forecast information would truly get the attention of planners. This requires not an aggregate demand, but rather a picture of how the demand is spread across small to large UAS, how it is spread across a wide range of missions, how it is expected over time and where, in terms of geospatial locations, will the demand appear. In 2012 the Volpe Center performed a study of the overall future demand for UAS. This was done by aggregate classes of aircraft types. However, the realistic expected demand will appear in clusters of aircraft activities grouped by similar missions on a smaller geographical footprint and then growing from those small cells. In general, there is not a demand forecast that is tightly coupled to the real purpose of the mission requirements (e.g. in terms of real locations and physical structures such as wind mills to inspect, farms to survey, pipelines to patrol, etc.). Being able to present a solid basis for the demand is crucial to getting the attention of investment, government and other fiscal planners. To this end, Mosaic ATM under NASA guidance is developing a crowd sourced, demand forecast engine that can draw forecast details from commercial and government users and vendors. These forecasts will be vetted by a governance panel and then provide for a sharable accurate set of projection data. Our paper describes the project and the technical approach we are using to design and create access for users to the forecast system.

A study of future communications concepts and technologies for the national airspace system (the first six months)

Preliminary findings indicate that spectrum and technology certification will continue to pose a challenge, especially in areas where software is increasingly used to perform hardware functions. It is anticipated that although some spectrum will become available as a result of the decommissioning of technologies i.e. VOR, the demand for spectrum will increase and future technologies will need to provide the ability to maximize the use of finite spectrum resources. Advances in electronics and communications technology will enable the integration of services and applications and thus reduce the number of systems deployed to the aircraft. Finally, the future aviation radio technology will depend on numerous factors including: air traffic management procedures, airline operations business models and the configuration of the airspace, which is anticipated to include Unmanned Aircraft Systems, hypersonic flights and manned aircraft.