Technological foundation for future intra-aircraft wireless applications: Technology assessment

This paper presents the results of an assessment process carried out in the department of Safety Critical Systems & Systems Engineering inside the Institute of Flight Systems of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for selecting the technological foundation to be used on future airborne intra-aircraft wireless applications. This paper summarizes the requirements imposed by the applications to be implemented wirelessly onboard an aircraft and introduces the benchmark criteria selected for comparing the various wireless standards. Finally, it describes the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) and sensitivity analysis methods used for supporting the objective selection processes of the most suitable wireless technologies for different sets of requirements. The work presented here as a part of the research work accomplished in DLR has determined that fundamental parameters for the design of real-time, deterministic data communication systems, like jitter among others must be defined before their technology foundation can be accurately selected. It has also identified some of the technology gaps which limit the implementation of wireless technologies for supporting airborne applications.