Reliability for Air-Ground Communications & AAM

This lecture will describe the topic of reliable aviation communications for AAM, focused on the air-ground (AG) case. After introducing aviation trends and coming requirements, we briefly survey the field of current AAM communications activity. We then describe availability and reliability in terms of the communications protocol stack, and focus on the physical layer (PHY). Both natural (channel) and artificial (e.g., interference, intentional jamming) impediments to link reliability are described, with some quantitative examples. The topic of communications link security follows, where we describe common methods for transmission security and their applicability to AAM. We also connect communications with the two other critical aviation wireless functions: navigation and surveillance. Following this, we consider an adversary’s perspective and how such views can aid in robust link design. After commenting on the future potential of machine learning and artificial intelligence, we conclude the talk.