Channel Modeling and Performance Analysis of Airplane-Satellite Terahertz Band Communications
Channel Modeling and Performance Analysis of Airplane-Satellite Terahertz Band Communications
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DOI：
10.1109/tvt.2021.3058581
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发表时间：
2021-03-01
影响因子：
6.8
通讯作者：
Juntti, Markku
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kokkoniemi, Joonas;Jornet, Josep M.;Juntti, Markku
飞机中的无线连接正变得越来越重要、越来越需要和越来越普遍。飞行中互联网的最大瓶颈之一是，飞机在大部分飞行时间都离卫星和地面基站很远。因此，在如此远距离的链路上保持与飞机的可靠和高速率无线连接成为一项挑战。微波频率允许很长的链路距离，但缺乏数据速率来服务多达数百名潜在的机上客户。因此，已利用毫米波频谱中的较高频段(30 GHz-300 GHz)来克服带宽限制。尽管如此，最先进的毫米波系统的每个用户吞吐量比地面无线网络的吞吐量低一个数量级。在本文中，我们进一步研究了太赫兹频段(THz，0.3 THz-10 THz)的信道特性，以绘制该频段用于航空的可行性图。首先，我们考虑了非平坦的地球几何结构和频率选择性太赫兹信道的主要特征，提出了一种详细的空中太赫兹通信信道模型。然后，我们应用该模型来估计不同条件下空中THz链路的特性。我们最终确定了使用飞机到卫星的太赫兹连接比使用飞机到地面的太赫兹连接更可取的高度。我们的结果显示，机载太赫兹链路的容量可能达到50-150 Gbps的速度，从而在整个飞行过程中为乘客和工作人员提供相当于蜂窝网络的数据速率。
Wireless connectivity in airplanes is becoming more important, demanded, and common. One of the largest bottlenecks with the in-flight Internet is that the airplane is far away from both the satellites and the ground base stations during most of the flight time. Maintaining a reliable and high-rate wireless connection with the airplane over such a long-range link thus becomes a challenge. Microwave frequencies allow for long link distances but lack the data rate to serve up to several hundreds of potential onboard customers. Higher bands in the millimeter-wave spectrum (30 GHz-300 GHz) have, therefore, been utilized to overcome the bandwidth limitations. Still, the per-user throughput with state-of-the-art millimeter-wave systems is an order of magnitude lower than the one available with terrestrial wireless networks. In this paper, we take a step further and study the channel characteristics for the terahertz band (THz, 0.3 THz-10 THz) in order to map the feasibility of this band for aviation. We first propose a detailed channel model for aerial THz communications taking into account both the non-flat Earth geometry and the main features of the frequency-selective THz channel. We then apply this model to estimate the characteristics of aerial THz links in different conditions. We finally determine the altitudes where the use of airplane-to-satellite THz connection becomes preferable over the airplane-to-ground THz link. Our results reveal that the capacity of the airborne THz link may reach speeds ranging from 50-150 Gbps, thus enabling cellular-equivalent data rates to the passengers and staff during the entire flight.