Cellular 4G LTE Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry Flight Test Results

Flight test results on an Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry (AMT) system employing 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) Cellular Technology are presented. The AMT system comprises a ground network of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) cellular base stations. Very high Doppler shifts due to the high speed of the Test Article (TA) are handled by an appliqué front-end to a COTS mobile transceiver. Doppler compensation allows seamless operation of LTE as the TA traverses the coverage area. An uninterrupted radio link as well as high bi-directional data rates were achieved even at a distance of 60 Km between the base stations and the TA. The results clearly demonstrate that the system can sustain an uninterrupted LTE connection at Doppler shifts that are much higher than what typical commercial LTE systems can support. The 4G system featured in this exercise has a direct extension to 5G technologies.International Foundation for TelemeteringProceedings from the International Telemetering Conference are made available by the International Foundation for Telemetering and the University of Arizona Libraries. Visit https://telemetry.org/contact-us/ if you have questions about items in this collection

LTE-BASED AERONAUTICAL MOBILE TELEMETRY - LAB AND FIELD TEST EXPERIMENTS

Aeronautical mobile telemetry (AMT) based on 3GPP’s LTE standard is implemented in a proof-of-concept system. The solution tackles the very high Doppler shifts expected in flight tests using an appliqué that can be inserted between the transmit/receive ports of the Test Article (TA) and the antennas. This appliqué estimates the Doppler shift and proactively compensates for it on the uplink signal being transmitted by the TA. The overall system has been tested under different operational conditions in a laboratory setup as well as in the field. In the laboratory setup, the desired operating conditions are created with a set of Software-Defined-Radio-based channel emulators coupled with a computer to control their behavior. In order to carry out field tests, an operational LTE network has been created at Edwards Air Force Base (EAFB) with two base stations, backhaul links, and a core network. In this paper, we provide descriptions of both laboratory and field test setups as well as the results of several tests that have been carried out to date. The results of lab and field tests lend strong support to the viability of this AMT solution.International Foundation for TelemeteringProceedings from the International Telemetering Conference are made available by the International Foundation for Telemetering and the University of Arizona Libraries. Visit http://www.telemetry.org/index.php/contact-us if you have questions about items in this collection

5G Cellular-Based Telemetry Airborne Transceiver

A novel 5G-compliant airborne transceiver is being designed and developed to support 5G-cellular-based aeronautical mobile telemetry (AMT). To support operation at speeds likely to be encountered in airborne telemetry, the transceiver includes our Velocite solution for on-board Doppler pre-compensation and is designed to meet the 5G enhanced-Mobile-Broadband (eMBB) service objectives. This paper presents an overview of the airborne transceiver’s overall design approach which includes a commercial 5G mobile modem and a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based Doppler compensator. It also describes the planned capabilities of the transceiver, the ground network architecture needed to support cellular telemetry, and system-level operation aspects. Finally, the paper concludes with a description of the specific design aspects that need to be considered for AMT, including a ruggedized design for integration with the test airframe to support AMT at the testing range.International Foundation for TelemeteringProceedings from the International Telemetering Conference are made available by the International Foundation for Telemetering and the University of Arizona Libraries. Visit https://telemetry.org/contact-us/ if you have questions about items in this collection