C-Band Telemetry Transition at AIRBUS Commercial Aircrafts
(Room Salon 17)
04 Jun 18
2:20 PM
-
3:40 PM
Tracks:
Telemetry Techniques of Active Programs on the Ranges
The story of Airbus commercial aircraft telemetry is closely linked to Airbus programs. It doesn’t need to come back to the Concorde (1970s) when the 1st analogic telemetry has been deployed, but you have to know that the 1st numeric link has been used for A320 flight test campaign (end of 80s). Wireless transmission like telemetry requires specific frequency allocation and for aircraft able to flight up to 42000 ft, on a large territory. This aspect has ever been a problem because, as Civil user, AIRBUS Commercial could not request a part of the S-Band Military bandwidth (2.2/2.3 GHz) in France. In the year 2000, an agreement was established with French Frequency Authorities to use a part of S-Band (2.7 GHz) initially allocated to Air Traffic Control radars, but with a limit on time. At the same time, an action of worldwide telemetry users (European, USA, Brazil, etc.) has been launched to ITU to obtain new frequencies for Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry . The item has been registered during the WRC 2003 and a positive answer during WRC2007 with the possibility to use C-Band (5 GHz). The move of S-Band to C-Band is the story I would like to present from first theoretical analysis (link budget) to G/T measurement on reception antenna in accordance to specific AIRBUS requirements from our internal customers.