Propagation measurements inside different civil aircrafts and comparison with EM techniques

This paper presents results of a narrowband measurement campaign conducted in a two different civil aircrafts. Inside a Boeing 737-400 and in an Airbus A340-300 aircraft, the objective being the development of a propagation prediction model which can be used in the deployment of in-cabin wireless networks. The measurements were conducted at three different frequency bands: 1.8, 2.1 and 2.45 GHz, representative of several wireless services. The path loss factor was found between 2.1 and 2.3 inside Boeing and between 3.3 and 3.6 inside Airbus. The average K-factor in the Airbus aircraft corridors was found between 9.5 and 10.1 dB, for LoS conditions and between 3.7 and 5.0 dB for NLoS cases. In respect the K-factor inside the Boeing corridor ranges between 12.1 and 12.6 dB. Propagation prediction technique based on Physical Optics was applied to the Boeing 737-400 cabin scenario to obtain comparison of theoretically predicted values and measurements.