SANDRA is ready to take off!
27 June 2013 - 30 June 2013
Austria
The EU FP7 project SANDRA (Seamless Aeronautical Networking through integration of Data links Radios and Antennas) started in 2009, aims to design, specify and develop an integrated aircraft communication system and now has been tested on a real aircraft flight.
On 24-26th June DLR made available the Airbus A320 “ATRA” (Advanced Technology Research Aircraft) which was equipped with the SANDRA communication system. In detail for the flight trials, three data links were envisioned; VDL2, BGAN and AeroMACS. Applications covering all avionic services were integrated by these data links and their performances were measured. It was tested that handover between legacy (VDL2, BGAN) and non-legacy (AeroMACS) data links managed by SANDRA system did not deteriorate applications’ performances. An AeroMACS prototype has been tested for air-ground communication during departure and landing phases.
SANDRA will allow the set up of new Air Transport Management (ATM) solutions which are based by processing a vast amount of data; indeed the ATM paradigm will change on the next ten years getting from an air traffic control management based by voice communications between air traffic controllers and pilots to an air traffic control management based by data communication among computers and where human intervention will be needed only in emergency events.
Most of the technical details and results are (will) be on http://www.sandra.aero(opens in new window) after public deliverables are approved by the European Commission. First results can be found in the open access book “Future Aeronautical Communications” accessible for free on www.intechweb.org.
On 24-26th June DLR made available the Airbus A320 “ATRA” (Advanced Technology Research Aircraft) which was equipped with the SANDRA communication system. In detail for the flight trials, three data links were envisioned; VDL2, BGAN and AeroMACS. Applications covering all avionic services were integrated by these data links and their performances were measured. It was tested that handover between legacy (VDL2, BGAN) and non-legacy (AeroMACS) data links managed by SANDRA system did not deteriorate applications’ performances. An AeroMACS prototype has been tested for air-ground communication during departure and landing phases.
SANDRA will allow the set up of new Air Transport Management (ATM) solutions which are based by processing a vast amount of data; indeed the ATM paradigm will change on the next ten years getting from an air traffic control management based by voice communications between air traffic controllers and pilots to an air traffic control management based by data communication among computers and where human intervention will be needed only in emergency events.
Most of the technical details and results are (will) be on http://www.sandra.aero(opens in new window) after public deliverables are approved by the European Commission. First results can be found in the open access book “Future Aeronautical Communications” accessible for free on www.intechweb.org.
Keywords
Avionics