On the economic feasibility of the IPS over aeronautical communication links

Aeronautical data communication networks are about to evolve in the upcoming decade. So called “Commercial Of The Shelf (COTS)” products should play a major role in the next generation aeronautical network. However, protocols developed and specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) are not always mature and are produced for a wide range of commercial applications. This means that protocols tend to have many options and higher management overhead is accepted more willingly. The bandwidth-limited aeronautical wireless link should, however, be used as efficiently as possible. This paper investigates possible concepts of IPS for an aeronautical network and analyses the involved overhead. Additionally, a first evaluation of a header compression protocol simulation shows whether such a protocol can be applied reasonably or not.