FLUG REVUE September 2003: Satcom systems from Honeywell for business jets

ONLINE IN BUSINESS JETS

By Volker K. Thomalla

Business jets are tools of everyday business life. They enable businessmen to travel to and from important negotiations by the fastest route. In so doing, they offer maximum flexibility since, unlike scheduled services, the passengers decide when the aircraft will commence the next leg or head back for home. But up to now business travellers could only be contacted during the flight by telephone. Today's standard means of communication, e-mail, was denied to passengers of small and medium-sized business jets.

This is set to change. The American electronics giant, Honeywell, has joined forces with companies that include Thales Avionics to offer a satellite communication system that will enable passengers on business jets to use the internet and send and receive e-mails in flight. Over a two-month period, a Honeywell team has been demonstrating the system in a Cessna Citation V test plane to interested owners of aircraft and selected publications, including FLUG REVUE, on a tour of Europe. We took a closer look at the system in Stuttgart.

The system uses satellites owned by the operator Inmarsat, which currently has almost global coverage. The service is called Swift64 and can manage data transmission rates similar to those enjoyed at home on an ISDN connection. Honeywell's SATCOM system MCS 4000/7000 can handle between three and six telephone conversations plus data transmission in parallel. For this purpose, the aircraft is fitted with a suitable antenna and several avionics boxes that weigh between 25 and 35kg, depending on the number of channels a customer wants to use in parallel. Depending on the amount of work involved, the modifications can be carried out in a few working days by appropriately qualified workshops. According to Bill Rowell of Honeywell in Stuttgart, in Europe Jet Aviation and Lufthansa Bombardier Aviation Services can perform the work, for example. The antenna is fitted to an exposed point on the aircraft, but it is not always as clearly visible as the one fitted on Honeywell's own Citation. On a Dassault Falcon, for example, the antenna disappears beneath an elongated covering panel on the vertical tailplane, while on a Global Express all that can be seen of it is a slight bulge on the tail assembly.

The antenna establishes the connection between aircraft and satellite. It transmits and receives on the frequencies 1.5 to 1.6GHz, known as the L band. The satellite forwards the signals (on frequencies 4GHz to 6GHz) to a ground station, which then establishes the desired connection to the internet or intranet.

The antenna needs a few minutes to align itself with the most suitable satellite. In some cases a long taxiway on the ground is sufficient for the aircraft to be "online" immediately after take-off. The datalink works like on a home PC. In the aircraft, users can connect their own laptops to the system either over a wireless network (WLAN) or via a standard cable connection.

But this is only the beginning of internet usage on board business jets: with three new satellites to be launched in the second and third quarters of 2004, the Aero Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) will bring global coverage and in certain areas (sport beams) enable transmission rates of up to 432kB per second, roughly six times as fast as today. The present Honeywell system should be upgradable to the latest technology once BGAN enters service in the fourth quarter of 2006. The open system architecture means that it will be possible to integrate future technological advances without having to replace the entire system. In this way satellite communication will make travelling in business jets even more efficient and productive.

From FLUG REVUE 9/2003

Last updated 11 August 2003

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