Martin Schirrmacher

UWB channel modeling within an aircraft cabin

This paper reports on the aircraft cabin UWB channel modeling based on a measurement campaign conducted on board an Airbus A319 cabin in the frequency range from 3 - 8 GHz. Besides path loss (L) and time dispersion parameters (maximum excess delay (taumax), RMS delay spread (sigmatau)), a modified Saleh-Velenuela (SV) model is derived for this new environment.

UWB propagation channels within an aircraft and an office building environment

Path loss at higher distances is much higher for NLOS in the office due to solid walls in the propagation path. In LOS, the results are converging with increasing distance. In our indoor campaign, these large distances can only be found on corridors. At small distances the path loss is about 10 dB less in the aircraft than in the office for all frequencies, which can also be observed in PL0. The delay spread is higher in the aircraft but converges with the LOS configuration in the office. However, the maximum excess delay is smaller for indoor LOS. This leads to the conclusion that the UWB channel in the aircraft fuselage is comparable to an indoor corridor with one important difference: there are much more relevant multi path contributions in the received signal than in office environment mainly caused by metal structures in the aircraft cabin. Strong reflecting environments lead to a limitation of data rate in single carrier systems. It can be exploited best by OFDM- and MIMO technologies with an appropriate system design. So UWB technology would be very suitable for this environment.

UWB coverage in public transport scenarios

In the near future, wireless connectivity will become a commodity in aircrafts. For the planning of the reliable network a detail analysis of the coverage is required. This paper studies the coverage in an AIRBUS A380 cabin for a OFDM UWB system based on the ECMA 368 standard. For this purpose, based on real measurement in an AIRBUS A380 airplane cabin, a Saleh-Valenzuela channel model and a path-loss model are presented. This models are used to obtain the block error rates and the throughput in an in-cabin environment.

UWB aircraft transfer function measurements in the frequency range from 2 to 8 GHz

In this paper the determination of transfer functions from inside an Airbus A319 to outside the aircraft in a frequency range from 2 GHz to 8 GHz is presented. Two different aspects have been investigated. The first is the determination of the fuselage attenuation of the aircraft in order to see, if existing airport communications and radar systems could be disturbed by onboard installed equipment. The second concerns possible coupling from inside the aircraft to different relevant aircraft navigation and communication antennas which are mounted outside the aircraft along the fuselage. The different results of these two measurements are presented and possible interferences with existing systems are discussed.