Low complexity fast filter bank-based channelization in L-DACS1 for aeronautical communications

Studies related to the growth of air traffic forecast that the air traffic is likely to double in next decade, which will heavily increase the load on aeronautical communications. Current systems will not be able to support this increase in the aeronautical communications; and hence there is a need of new reliable and high speed communication system for the air-to-ground (A/G) communications. European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL) has proposed the use of IEEE L-band for A/G communications. Currently, two candidate systems are being studied for this proposed L-band Digital Aeronautical Communications System (L-DACS), namely L-DACS1 and LDACS2, under the initiatives funded by EUROCONTROL. In this paper we consider one of the candidate systems, L-DACS1, and propose a fast filter bank (FFB)-based channelizer for L-DACS1. We show that use of FFB enables simultaneous extraction of up to eight L-DACS1 channels (frequency bands), with 49% to 85% savings in number of multipliers over conventional methods and faster filtering operation without compromising on the filtering performance.