SynFlight: A Disruption-Aware Programmed Transmission Approach For Air-Ground Networks

This work proposes and analyses an approach that increases the efficiency of aircraft passenger communications utilizing air ground links in the presence of disruptions. The approach (called SynFlight) adopts the MIPV6/NEMO architecture to manage the mobility of the mobile router responsible for the connection between the avionics network and the ground network, and create new entities in the mobile router and in the NEMO home agents to improve the performance of the modified TCP along an air route with link disruptions. We develop the following entities: (i) a link status notification entity, responsible for sensing the state of link connectivity between the aircraft and the air-ground station; (ii) an air route manager entity, that processes information about the route and estimates the time duration of the transmissions and disruptions intervals; (iii) A programmed transmission controller entity, responsible for controlling these transmissions and disruptions intervals; and (iv) a convergence layer, with two techniques: to adjust the RTO value during a disruption phase; or to freeze the transmission during a disruption phase. We develop Monte Carlo simulations to analyze the effects of disruptions in our proposal as well as on TCP and DTN (Delay Tolerant Network). The results indicate that the SynFlight approach guarantees a higher performance in relation to the well-known TCP and DTN protocols.