Wireless Connectivity in Airplanes: Challenges and the Case for UWB

Wireless solutions for on-board communications are gaining momentum in the aerospace industry with aim to further improve flight safety, reduce aircraft costs, and lower environmental impact. Also passenger infotainment services increasingly realized a wireless way call high-rate connectivity Internet. There many issues though, including security, coexistence, power sustainability. We argue that ultra-wideband (UWB) technology is promising implementation path such intra-aircaft communications. From sustainability perspective, UWB attains unique trade-off between consumption data rate can become key enabler. Experimental results from proof-of-concept deployment of off-the-shelf transceivers an Airbus A319 support our discussion shed light on challenges ahead.