Aeronautical Ad-Hoc Networking for the Internet-Above-The-Clouds
1 Aeronautical Ad-Hoc Networking for the Internet-Above-The-Clouds Jiankang Zhang, Senior Member, IEEE, Taihai Chen, Shida Zhong, Jingjing Wang, Wenbo Zhang, Xin Zuo, Robert G. Maunder, Senior Member, IEEE, Lajos Hanzo Fellow, IEEE Abstract—The engineering vision of relying on the “smart expected to grow for years to come. For Europe as an example, sky” for supporting air traffic and the “Internet above the it is predicted that there will be 14.4 million flights in 2035, clouds” for in-flight entertainment has become imperative for which corresponds to a 1:8% average annual growth compared the future aircraft industry. Aeronautical ad hoc Networking (AANET) constitutes a compelling concept for providing broad- to the flights in 2012 [1]. However, passenger aircraft remain band communications above clouds by extending the coverage of one of the few places where ubiquitous data connectivity Air-to-Ground (A2G) networks to oceanic and remote airspace cannot be offered at high throughput, low latency and low cost. via autonomous and self-configured wireless networking amongst A survey by Honeywell [2] revealed that nearly 75% of airline commercial passenger airplanes. The AANET concept may be passengers are ready to switch airlines to secure access to a viewed as a new member of the family of Mobile ad hoc Networks (MANETs) in action above the clouds. However, AANETs have faster and more reliable Internet connection on-board and more more dynamic topologies, larger and more variable geographical than 20% of passengers have already switched their airline network size, stricter security requirements and more hostile for the sake of better in-flight Internet access.
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