Validation of aeronautical fuselage channel model for Iris Air-Traffic Management via satellite

The aim of this paper is to validate existing aeronautical fuselage multipath and previous assumptions, based on measurements from an experimental flight campaign. Particularly, the results of the study will be used to consolidate the on-going communication system design activities, in the frame of the European Space Agency (ESA) Iris Programme for Air Traffic Management via Satellite. The data analyses focus on the detection of strong fuselage multipath effects and on the characterization of the channel for the different flight phases. The campaign included several experimental flights from Amsterdam airport towards and around Accra, Ghana and from Amsterdam to Spitsbergen area, close to the North Pole. During the experimental flights, GPS L1 signal data was recorded using the Spirent Record & Playback GSS6400 equipment, as analogy to the L-band channel to be implemented for the operational service. This collected data was processed to characterise fuselage multipath effects during the en-route phase of flight at different elevation/azimuth. Results of carrier-to-multipath (C/M) ratio and fading (C/No) time-series at different satellite elevation angles are presented and compared with existing aeronautical fuselage models. Furthermore, electromagnetic simulations based on Method of Moments have been used to contrast the observations.