Capacity Dimensioning for Air Traffic Management (ATM) Services in a Spot Beam Satellite System

Eurocontrol and FAA have jointly produced a roadmap document for future development of Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems, which is called the Communications Operating Concepts and Requirements (COCR) for Future Radio Systems (FRS) [1]. The document (COCR) is written as a general guideline, without taking into account any technological implementation. In this work we are interested in estimating the capacity requirements for a satellite system for ATM. The bit rate requirement per spot beam is determined using the same approach as in the COCR, with some parameters adjusted to fit in a satellite system scenario. Furthermore, the criticality of one particular service message, the A-EXEC, is verified by comparing the required bit rate when it is excluded from the computation. A condition when this criticality applies is also determined.