NextGen CNS TEST BED Solutions to Advance the National Airspace System

Safety and efficiency of airport operations are critical aspects of enabling the NextGen air transportation system envisioned by the U.S. Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO). Increased requirements for airport weather and surveillance sensors, navigation equipment, and communications for traffic management activities make a modern wireless communications network necessary in airport surface environments.

The Test Bed's surface wireless communications infrastructure consists of two networks operating in the 5 GHz and 900 MHz bands. These are deployed at each of the three airports. The 5 GHz network provides a wireless backbone infrastructure with an overlaid 900 MHz administrative network. Initial performance evaluations include network capacity, packet loss, latency and link availability. The effects of multipath, link obstruction and effects of moving aircraft are under study.

The wireless networks are the communications infrastructure for the development, testing and evaluation of many NextGen concepts and technologies. Each airport surface network is linked to all of the other Test Bed sites via a wide area network, creating a flexible system wide Test Bed communications infrastructure.

The airport surface wireless networks in the Test Bed also enable the development and evaluation of a prototype 5091-5150 MHz wireless network based on Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) standards in an active airport environment. The 5091-5150 MHz extended microwave landing system (MLS) band will play an important role in future airport surface communications. The Test Bed will assist in the evaluation of this band for surface communications, including the applicability of the IEEE 802.16e standard as a basis for an International Congress of Aeronautical Organizations (ICAO) standard in an airport environment.

The 5 GHz wireless nodes can be configured to operate in either the unlicensed 5.3 and 5.8 GHz UNII bands, or the 5.091-5.150 GHz Extended MLS band. Much of the surface network environmental and operational testing will be done in the 5.3 GHz unlicensed band. NASA holds an experimental license for MLS band network evaluations.