Future Aeronautical Communications Concepts and Their Impact

on ATM Procedures
Miodrag Sajatovic, Frequentis GmbH,
Miodrag.Sajatovic@frequentis.com, Wolfganggasse 58-60, A-1120 Vienna,
Austria
Michael Schnell, German Aerospace Center (DLR),
Michael.Schnell@dlr.de, P.O. Box 1116, D-82230 Wessling, Germany

Miodrag SAJATOVIC has successfully participated in international aeronautics projects

focused on communications and operational concepts (F-VHF, MA-AFAS). His special
expertise lies in VHF radio communications, and he holds a patent for secure VHF
communication.
Michael SCHNELL is group leader and project manager of the Aeronautical
Communications Group in the Institute of Communications and Navigation, DLR. His
special interests are in terrestrial mobile and aeronautical communications. He is
lecturer for multi-carrier communications at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany,
member of IEEE as well as VDE/ITG, and serves as selected advisor to the German
Aviation Authority (DFS) for ICAO/ACP.

Introduction
Currently, in continental areas, ATM mobile communications use a narrowband VHF
(Very High Frequency) voice system combined with a VHF digital data link, e.g. VDL
(VHF Digital Link) Mode 2 or ACARS (Aircraft Addressing and Reporting System). In
remote areas and over oceans HF (High Frequency) and SATCOM (SATellite
COMmunications) voice and data link systems are used.
The analogue VHF voice system DSB-AM (Double Side-Band Amplitude Modulation)
was introduced many decades ago. It is capable to provide safety-critical ATC (Air
Traffic Control) communications services, but it has many internal deficiencies. In
particular, the system security is questionable, because it is completely open to
masquerading, i.e. to intruders pretending to be air traffic controllers. The system also has
important internal safety gaps, e.g. lack of talker identification or blockages due to the
stuck microphone.
Narrowband air-ground data link technologies that are today operationally available to
ATM in continental areas –ACARS, VDL Mode 2 within an ATN (Air Traffic Network)
framework – also have some important deficiencies: Access collisions are possible due to
the CSMA (Carrier-Sense Multiple-Access) MAC (Medium Access Control) protocol,
there is no support for data priority at sub-network level, and narrowband
communications channels can easily be jammed.
New aeronautical communications system will be needed to relieve the legacy systems.
For continuity reasons, the procedures within any new system should as far as possible
remain aligned with the existing ones. But by sticking forever to the old practices, new
attractive features inherent to the state-of-the-art technologies may remain “hidden” to
the ATM community, although well accepted in other areas. This forces us towards new
operational procedures that are better aligned with the state-of-the-art technology.

This paper outlines the state-of-the-art of digital communications and discusses both their
benefits and possible impact on ATM procedures. Furthermore, the B-VHF (“Broadband
VHF”) research project within the 6th Framework Program of the European Commission
(EC) aiming to develop a future aeronautical communications system for the VHF band
with in-band transition capability is introduced.

Characteristics of Modern Communications Systems

Having available digital data instead of an analogue signal enables to apply all kinds of
digital data processing at both the transmitter and receiver side. Additionally, modern
digital cellular systems offer excellent power and/or bandwidth efficiency [1] and high
robustness against different kinds of disturbances (e.g. jamming, interference, multipath).
Other desired features include selective voice addressing, identification of the voice user,
priority management, selective QoS handling, full duplex, cellular structure, as well as
multiplexing of voice and data applications. At the same time, an essential characteristic
of a legacy voice system – party-line voice – can easily be provided via re-broadcast over
base station by retaining the star topology within a single cell.
These features offer a chance to improve ATM communications, increasing system
capacity and performance, but may influence operational procedures. Selected
operational issues are discussed in the following section.

Impact on ATM Procedures

As the development of ATM operational concepts is not synchronized with the
technology advances, new technologies should respect existing concepts and practices.
Similarly, new concepts and associated procedures should be developed by taking into
account the known constraints of the available technologies, while making the best use of
new opportunities. Whereas the discussion about modern ATM concepts and procedures
is already open [2], the link to the enabling communications technologies is sometimes
still missing. In the following, we indicate selected aspects of modern communications
technologies and indicate the possible operational impact on ATM procedures.
Full-duplex Voice
Today, the voice channel is used in a half-duplex way. Modern digital systems typically
provide full-duplex voice channels. Existing operational voice procedures for safety
communications mandate that the receiving party listens without interruptions to the
transmitting party until the complete message is received. This will probably not change
in the near future. In consequence, under normal conditions pilots and controllers may
continue to use the system in the old half-duplex way, even if they became access to full-
duplex voice channels. Operational advantages of full duplex ATM voice connections
become apparent when the controller needs prioritized access to the channel (pre-
emption), e.g. to resolve a stuck microphone problem or a communication conflict. Under
such conditions, guaranteed prioritized controller’s access to the voice channel brings a
clear safety benefit, at a cost of only moderate procedural changes.
PTT-based Access to the Voice Channel
For continuity reasons the PTT (Push-To-Talk) access to the ATC voice channel may
also remain the preferred choice in the future. It is required for party-line
communications, but it is also recommended [3] for all other kinds of ATM
communications, including on-demand voice services. Direct human-controlled PTT
access to the voice channel may be supplemented or even replaced – assuming fast
system-internal signaling mechanism – by requesting the access opportunity from the
controlling ground station as soon as PTT is issued by the pilot. Voice communications
conflicts of potentially long duration could be completely avoided, but an additional time
may be needed until the channel actually becomes available. Apparently, there is a trade-
off between the pure PTT approach prone to collisions and the collision-free reservation-
based approach.
Voice Party-line
Nowadays, all pilots within an ATC sector are expected to permanently monitor voice
traffic on that sector frequency. Monitoring of the ATC voice traffic by all pilots within
an ATC sector is known as party-line. It increases situation awareness for the group of
pilots in this ATC sector, but is also required for the common access to the shared voice
channel; “listen before PTT” is the MAC protocol for voice communications. However,
party-line has a side effect on security, as not only pilots, but almost anybody can
monitor the voice channel. Additionally, a party-line voice channel is permanently open,
but is typically used for only about 30% of the time, what may be seen as wasting the
communications resources, when compared to modern cellular mobile systems.
Party-line must be re-built within a digital system for continuity reasons, but it is not
necessarily required for the MAC access anymore. PTT-based access may be arbitrated
by using voice activity status signaling instead of monitoring voice itself.
In the medium- or long-term future, party-line might even become obsolete. Its
importance will decrease with increasing usage of (silent-) data link communications.
After full deployment of ADS-B (Automatic-Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast)
system’s situation awareness can be provided without a need for party-line voice.
Automated Handover Between ATC Sectors
Today, handover between ATC sectors’ voice channels is done in co-operation between
the controller and the pilot, increasing their workload, although mainly being an internal
issue of the communications system. This situation can be improved by using the data
link which results in a half-automated handover procedure.
Modern digital systems could internally provide support for fully-automated handovers,
as foreseen e.g. within the VDL Mode 3 specification. In a hypothetic scenario, the
controller issues a voice handover instruction and triggers an internal system message
containing the new sector’s channel identifier obtained from the FDPS (Flight Data
Processing System). The pilot attempts to adjust a new communications channel on his
radio console and finds the next channel parameters already pre-set. The pilot just checks
and accepts the indicated parameters. After the reliability of such internal handover
feature was demonstrated, a fully automated, controller-initiated procedure without active
pilot’s involvement may be activated, that would just notify the pilot that the new ATC
sector’s channel is now active and indicate required pilot’s action (contact or monitor). At
any time, the pilot would still be able to “overwrite” a system proposal by manually
entering new channel parameters.
Talker Identification
Safety incidents due to call sign confusions can lead to fatal consequences and can be
reduced if talker identification (aircraft call signs, ATC facility Ids) is provided with each
voice transaction. With a digital system, this is relatively easy, but it may require
corresponding Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) for the controller and optionally also
for the pilot. On the ground side, indication of talker IDs may also require an additional
interface between the Voice Communications System (VCS) and the surveillance system,
as well as the change of controller procedures.
Controller’s Monitoring of Voice Transmissions
Today, it is common practice that controllers monitor their own voice transmissions
(loop-back of a “side tone”). By applying this procedure the controllers know that the
communications system is operating correctly. With modern technology it is easily
possible to provide the same degree of confidence by purely technical system monitoring
in real time. The impact on operational procedures can be minimized if the voice loop-
back is implemented directly within the VCS.
Controller’s Selection of Voice Radio Stations
Aircraft voice transmissions can today be received by an unlimited number of ground
stations, the BSS (Best Signal Selection) function within the VCS normally takes care
that finally only one demodulated signal is passed to the controller. The controller may at
any moment at his discretion freely select the “best” ground station for a given aircraft,
based on the estimated aircraft location, e.g. obtained by a surveillance picture.
An inherent feature of a modern mobile communications system is that it tries to establish
the best possible communications path between the ground station and a mobile user in a
way that is transparent to both of them. This is incompatible with the old approach where
the controller and not the automation selects the ground station, but provides the same or
improved level of performance (communications quality). In order to optimally exploit
the inherent opportunities of new systems, the procedural need for free ground station
selection by the controller should be re-considered.
Quality of Digital Voice
The analogue DSB-AM system is apparently still satisfactory in terms of voice quality,
which is achieved by intensive training of both controllers and pilots. A digital voice
system provides voice quality that is nearly constant within the coverage range, i.e., the
system is designed to guarantee that the bit error rate remains below a certain acceptable
limit. This has potential to reduce human workload, reduce misunderstandings and
increase system safety.
Communications Security and Robustness
The robustness of an analogue DSB-AM system against jamming cannot be improved
easily. The internal resistance against jamming for a future broadband digital system is
given due to the usage of spread-spectrum techniques and diversity.
Another opportunity to increase system security at the application level is to use end-to-
end user authentication. In the voice context, a digital signature, using either asymmetric
public/private keys or a message authentication code calculated by using symmetric keys,
could be applied to each transmitted voice message. This, however, is not available today
and raises operational issues, in particular in the mixed, secure/non-secure environment.
Party-line voice communications may also have undesired impact on security
(eavesdropping). Addressed ATM voice communications have been foreseen [3] and may
provide some benefits. Apparently, the detailed operational concept for the
communications security – in particular voice security – is still missing and should be
developed as soon as possible.
Selection of Communications Services
Today, the pilot selects the desired voice service by selecting the VHF radio channel on
his radio console. The availability of data link services is indicated and the service is
selected via a dedicated data link HMI.
In the future, broadband communications systems will offer multiple voice and data
services on the same broadband channel, thus, the unique mapping of one service onto
one radio channel will not exist anymore (a supplementary means to indicate “abstract”
voice channel identifiers to the pilot will be required, with limited procedural changes). A
more complex voice HMI may be necessary for addressed voice services, to select the
communication partner from the list of possible choices. It seems that in an integrated
voice/data communications system with an integrated airborne voice/data radio, an
“integrated” voice/data HMI may be the preferable choice, as it would not only allow the
selection of data services, but also the selection of the desired voice service. This
approach would clearly require a change/supplement of existing ATM procedures and
may have an impact on airborne architecture.

B-VHF System and Its Impact on ATM Procedures

As an example of a future aeronautical communications system, we consider B-VHF in
this section. After a brief overview of the enabling multi-carrier technology, we discuss
the proposed B-VHF operational and functional principles and their impact on ATM
procedures. Moreover, possible deployment scenarios for B-VHF system are given
including the in-band transition option.
Technical Principles of B-VHF
The air interface of B-VHF communications system [4] is based on multi-carrier OFDM
(Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing) technology [5]. This technology is one of
the most promising candidates for future broadband wireless communications. Currently,
several European research projects are dealing with multi-carrier communications for 4G
(4th Generation mobile radio communications) systems and it is expected that this
technology will be standardized as air interface for 4G around 2010-2015. Note, multi-
carrier communications is already used in several standards, e.g. DAB (Digital Audio
Broadcasting), DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestrial), and many WLAN
(Wireless Local Area Network) standards.

For the forward link (controller to pilot) B-VHF applies MC-CDMA (Multi-Carrier
Code-Division Multiple-Access) [4], [5] which is a combination of OFDM with CDMA
(Code-Division Multiple-Access), whereas OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division
Multiple-Access) [4], [5] is used for the reverse link (pilot to controller) which is a
combination of OFDM with FDMA (Frequency-Division Multiple-Access). As duplex
scheme TDD (Time Division Duplex) has been chosen, since it simplifies the airborne
transceiver architecture and avoids a need for paired broadband VHF channels.
An interesting advantage of multi-carrier communications is its flexibility and
adjustability to certain spectrum restrictions which comes from the fact that multi-carrier
systems are designed in frequency domain. With multi-carrier technology it is even
possible to realize transmission systems which do not need a contiguous transmission
band. Certain frequency areas can be left unused by simply turning off the respective
carriers in this area. Thus, multi-carrier technology enables the realization of an overlay
broadband system if the legacy narrowband systems applied in the considered frequency
band do not use the whole frequency band, but leave some frequency gaps. Investigations
within the B-VHF project based on measurement flights as well as on worst-case
simulations indicate that there is enough capacity available in the VHF band to establish
the B-VHF overlay system in parallel to the current legacy VHF systems.
Operational and Functional Principles of B-VHF
The B-VHF system design is based on a cellular approach with star-topology within each
cell. Thus, all aircraft transmissions are directed towards the central station in each
B-VHF cell. A B-VHF cell is an abstract volume of space providing services to users
using a dedicated B-VHF broadband channel. The cellular concept effectively de-couples
communications from the operational applications. The B-VHF cells can be designed
independently of existing or future ATC-sectors. The handover between B-VHF cells is
automatic and fully transparent to the users, whereas an operational handover between
ATC sectors remains human-controlled with an optional internal support for fully
automated inter-sector handover.
The B-VHF ground station provides different types of communications services to its
users. This includes broadcast voice/data transmissions to all aircraft within the ground
station range and point-to-point voice/data communications between single aircraft and a
ground station. Moreover, the B-VHF system design supports both ATM and AOC
communications, and respects their specific QoS expectations.
All important features of existing voice and data link systems are either directly
implemented, or re-built within the B-VHF system. As an example, Figure 1 shows how
the party-line voice functionality between pilots, which today is based on direct air-air
connectivity, has been functionally replaced by a re-broadcast towards pilots of aircraft
within the current ATC sector or within a group of coupled ATC sectors.
 Pilot/Controller/Pilot
Party Line via GS re-
transmission

A
C

GSC: Ground Station Controller

GNI: Ground Network Interface
VCS: Voice Communications
B System

GND B-VHF
B-VHF
SYSTEM
Receiver
B-VHF G G V
S N C
Transmitter
C I S

Figure 1: Party-line with re-transmission via B-VHF ground station (GS).

This is possible due to the fact that a full-duplex voice channel has been allocated to each
ATC sector. The re-transmission principle is used for all types of air-air voice and data
link communications. As ground and airborne users do not perceive the change of the
system topology, no changes of operational procedures are expected. In particular, the
usage of the B-VHF technology within the ATN framework is fully transparent to the
users, except for the improved perceived performance of air-ground data link.
The B-VHF system will internally use duplex voice channels, but the users are not forced
to change their procedures – they may continue to use it in a half-duplex way. The access
to the channel will remain based on pressing the PTT key without a need to change
operational procedures, but there will be optional provisions within the B-VHF system
that allow for improved access performance when compared to the current situation, e.g.
reservation-based access in order to avoid access collisions. Such features may require
limited adaptation of operational procedures for both controllers and pilots.
The B-VHF voice functionality will be enhanced by using the talker ID feature and voice
signaling. These features are “new” by their nature (but not B-VHF specific) and will
have to be accompanied by the development of corresponding procedures and practices.
The same is true for the “new” category of addressed voice services. Pilot’s selection
between a broad range of B-VHF voice services (including the “new” ones) may impose
a need for operational changes in the same way as for any new technology capable to
support such new features. While fully supporting the party-line, the B-VHF system will
provide alternative possibilities to use addressed voice communications and will allow
for seamless transition between these two modes.
Possible Deployment Scenarios
The transition between an old and a new communications system is always a difficult
exercise, in particular in the case of a safety-critical application like ATM where the
legacy system has to be maintained for a very long time, i.e., until all aircraft are
equipped with the new system. Moreover, spectrum assignments for ATM
communications are scarce, especially in preferred frequency ranges and the VHF band
might remain the first choice also for a new aeronautical communications system.
In principle, there are two different deployment scenarios for the B-VHF system. The
first scenario requires additional frequency ranges somewhere outside the VHF band, e.g.
within the DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) band. The new system introduced in
that additional band would immediately provide additional communications capacity.
After enough aircraft are equipped with the new system, a considerable number of VHF
channels can be abandoned for DSB-AM communications and used to finally implement
the new system also in the VHF band. Only a few VHF channels would be retained for
serving the small aircraft population still using the old DSB-AM system. The
disadvantages of this approach are the additionally required frequency band and that the
B-VHF RF (Radio Frequency) front-end would have to be changed after the system has
been moved back to the VHF band.
The second scenario is more attractive, but also more ambitious. It is based on an in-band
transition concept. The first deployment scenario might be used for any new aeronautical
communications systems, but the second scenario is a specific feature of B-VHF.
Applying the second scenario, B-VHF is introduced in the VHF band and operated in
parallel to the DSB-AM system. As usage of B-VHF grows, more and more DSB-AM
channels can be abandoned, giving additional capacity to B-VHF. By this way, B-VHF is
introduced gradually in the VHF band leaving as much DSB-AM channels untouched as
required for serving aircraft population that still uses the DSB-AM system. At the
beginning, B-VHF would provide only a fraction of its possible capacity, since only parts
of the VHF spectrum are available for B-VHF usage. However, capacity is rising
gradually as additional VHF channels become available for B-VHF. Finally, after the
transition phase B-VHF has its full capacity which is expected to be considerably higher
than the capacity currently provided by the legacy VHF systems.

Conclusions
We have shown, in general and for the B-VHF system, that considerable improvements
for ATM are possible with modern digital communications. In our opinion the
development of future ATM procedures – that are anyway mandated by new ATM
concepts – should be aware of the specific features and possible benefits offered by
modern digital communications. Moreover, to optimally exploit these benefits, even
some existing ATM procedures should be re-considered in the future.

References
[1] J. Proakis, Digital Communications. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001.
[2] http://atm2003.eurocontrol.fr
[3] Eurocontrol, “EATM Operating Concept of the Mobile Aviation Communication
Infrastructure Supporting ATM beyond 2015 (MACONDO Study),” Report within
European Air Traffic Management (EATM) Program, Ed. 1.0, July 2002.
[4] M. Schnell, E. Haas, C. Rihacek, M. Sajatovic, “B-VHF – An Overlay System
Concept for Future ATC Communications in the VHF Band,” Conference
Proceedings of 23rd Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC 2004), October
2004, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
[5] K. Fazel and S. Kaiser, Multi-Carrier and Spread-Spectrum Systems. West Sussex:
John Wiley & Sons, 2003.