Improving the Lifespan of LDACS Air-To-Air Multi-Hop Connections by Heading Direction

Kurzfassung

The current capacity of aeronautical datalinks is reaching its limits, especially in the European airspace, and hindering the growth of global civil aviation. To modernize Air Traffic Management (ATM) and digitize aeronautical communications, research, and deployment of successor technologies are underway. The planned successor for the En-Route (ENR) domain, i.e., continental air traffic, in European air traffic, is the L-band Digital Aeronautical Communications System (LDACS). LDACS is a terrestrial Air-Ground (A/G) communications system. Additionally, LDACS is planned to be expanded by an Air-Air (A/A) communication mode called LDACS A/A in the future. This long-distance multi-hop A/A communication can expand LDACS ground station coverage to oceanic and remote areas, enhancing the usefulness of the terrestrial infrastructure. While LDACS A/G incorporates robust cybersecurity measures, the development of cybersecurity for the LDACS A/A extension is in its early stages. The topology of the underlying mesh network poses a specific design constraint for cybersecurity in aeronautical multi-hop A/A networks. The objective of this paper is to propose an efficient routing strategy and to investigate the duration of stable, multi-hop LDACS A/A connections. Analyzing flight trace data from the OpenSky database for European air traffic reveals significant variations in results based on the time of day and region.