Objective
The purpose of the SAGCOL project was to provide the Commission with an assessment of Aeronautical Mobile Communication Services (AMCS), taking into account the current, near-future and future needs of the users.
In the framework of this study the following two categories of communication links have been reviewed:
- ground-based air-ground communication links
- satellite-based air-ground communication link.
The ground-based air-ground communication links review has been approached in order to cover the main aspects of each of the currently used communication links (HF and VHF) and of the new communication links that are foreseen to be used in the near and far future: SSR Mode S, Terrestrial Flight Telephone Service (TFTS), infra-red and millimetre-wave. These air-ground communication links have been reviewed with the aim of verifying their usefulness to provide the AMCS. The ground-based communication links have been assessed in terms of general characteristics, link characteristics (propagation, frequency bands, coverage, range, application zone, phase of flight, etc.), Aircraft Earth Station (block diagram, main functions of each element, analog and digital characteristics, etc.), ground station (block diagram, element main functions, analogue and digital characteristics, etc.), and future improvements.
The review of the space-based air-ground communication links has been approached in order to cover the main aspects concerning the use of satellite links to provide the AMCS. An assessment of the aspects bound to the Satellites Constellations has been performed, considering that the constellation parameters (number of satellites, orbit height, inclination, shape, etc.) have a significant implication on the communications link design and, hence, on the characteristics of space, ground and user segments. Different kinds of constellations have been reviewed: ie those based on the Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO), on High-Inclined Earth Orbits (HIEO), on Medium Earth Orbits (MEO) and on Low Earth Orbits (LEO). The main characteristics of possible communication systems utilising the considered constellations have been assessed, encompassing the Aircraft Earth Station (AES) as well as the satellite. Finally, a preliminary analysis of the satellite cost has been performed for the various system options.
The requirements of the main Aeronautical Communication Services have been assessed by the identification, for each of them, of the applications and of the relative messages. Each message has then been characterised in terms of information type and size, required quality, exchange rate and area of coverage. Furthermore, in order to have correct information about the required communication resources, the information related to the traffic distribution in different airspace regions has been provided performing the Definition of the Spatial Distribution of the Traffic activity.
Future work and results
Following the theoretical results, an experimental programme (flight trials) has been recommended to validate the proposed Avionic Telecommunication Sub-Network (ATSN), with the purpose of verifying its operational performance and analysing in practice its weak points.
The SAGCOL project has therefore provided a hypothetical Avionic Sub-Network as a result of a step-by-step analysis, and suggested how to test the proposed architecture. Beyond these two main achievements, the project has also identified the areas requiring further investigation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology mechanical engineering vehicle engineering aerospace engineering satellite technology
- engineering and technology mechanical engineering vehicle engineering aerospace engineering aircraft
- social sciences social geography transport transport planning air traffic management
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Programme(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Coordinator
10146 Torino
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.