Outdoor-to-aircraft cabin measurements and study of interference scenarios

This paper presents an outdoor-to-aircraft measurement campaign conducted inside a long range Airbus A340–300 aircraft in order to evaluate the attenuation induced by the haul of the aircraft. The obtained results can be used to perform an interference study and assess whether the aircraft mobile terminal interferes to the ground base station and the opposite. The minimum aircraft attenuation was found 15.5 dB. This value increases 5.5 dB, in average, under the wing of the aircraft. From the interference study, it is found that even from a distance of 286 km away, interference may be caused by the ground base station to the aircraft mobile terminal. Finally, in order to prevent that a ground base station will interfere to an on-board mobile terminal an additional attenuation of 12.3 dB is at least required. For the opposite scenario an extra attenuation of about 8.5 dB is needed.