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Secure aTm cdmA software defined Radio

Final Report Summary - STAR (Secure aTm cdmA software defined Radio)

Saturation of the air traffic management (ATM) frequency bands will arrive soon - first in Europe from around 2010-2015 onwards and then in the USA - creating severe traffic congestion and increasing safety risks. A short-term solution for the USA consists in adopting the 8.33 kHz spacing. This will not suffice for Europe, which must solve this issue by itself before a solution comes from USA. Depending on the forecast scenarios, it appears that current and planned analogue and even digital VHF systems (VDL mode 2, 3 or 4) will only support capacity growth until 2015 at most in Europe before being saturated. It is feared that ATC problems could arise earlier (from 2010 on) in high-density traffic areas creating severe traffic congestion and increasing safety risks. The reuse of the UMTS standard, which has been developed at huge expense, in another application (ATM), is of great value to Europe. STAR aimed to study and validate a secure, scalable, wideband UMTS / 3GPP communication system (avionics modem and ground communication infrastructure) for a future ATM system with provision for SATCOM link extension.

Concerning the standardisation and dissemination activities, the ICAO decision to remove WCDMA from the ATM radio short list candidates technologies put an end to our efforts to promote and standardise UMTS / WCDMA waveform. The remaining funding of these tasks for each partner was re-oriented towards tentative completion of the third contract amendment objectives. According to that, the D11-2 deliverable was cancelled too.

An internet website has been developed and is maintained in order to guarantee an updated information availability. The project scope, description and achievements will be clearly mentioned in order to allow the non-project community to follow the STAR progress. The project website will be referenced by the partners, the European Commission (CORDIS) as well as other organisations (e.g. standardisation committees) supporting the developed of the system.

The STAR website allows any interested people to access directly the information generated by the project. Technical papers, progress reports and tutorials will be published and the website will be updated continuously. This website will continue to be completed and updated beyond the funding period to guarantee the long-term sustainability of STAR activities. Technical papers presented in conferences and journals, and contributions to standards will be published on the web.