On the Application of Multiuser Multiple Antenna Technology in LDACS

Kurzfassung

Multiuser multiple antenna systems can significantly enhance the overall throughput of communication systems by allowing multiple users to share the same time–frequency resources. Although these systems are widely used in wireless communications, their application to the L-band Digital Aeronautical Communications System (LDACS) has not yet been explored. In this paper, we investigate the potential performance gains of integrating multiuser multiple antenna systems technology into LDACS and assess its practical viability. We propose an implementation that requires no changes to the LDACS physical frame structure and all modifications are confined to the ground station, with no impact on the aircraft side. Our approach considers a multiple antenna ground station capable of receiving simultaneous transmissions from multiple aircraft. To evaluate performance under the time-varying conditions of aeronautical links, we employ a realistic geometry-based stochastic air–ground channel model derived from dedicated flight measurement campaigns. The results show that the proposed approach can increase the LDACS throughput by a factor of six in the climb & descent scenario and by up to a factor of ten in the enroute cruise phase compared to the standard LDACS system. This is achieved while also improving individual aircraft link quality, thereby increasing the overall robustness of the system. In the takeoff & landing scenario, the system throughput also increases significantly; however, a degradation in the individual link quality is observed in this case.