Honeywell is seeking US Federal Communications Commission approval for enhancements to its airborne cell phone system that will enable passengers to use BlackBerrys, personal digital assistants and wireless laptops in flight.
During a recent series of flight tests, the development team verified that the modified system “will not compromise safety or interfere with the ground cell network”, says Honeywell director of customer marketing Dan Barks.
The system uses the GPRS worldwide radio protocol as an add-on to the GSM capability that is already available in most cell phones. GPRS is also widely available to GSM cell phone subscribers.
“The cell phone system and service will support both voice and text messaging in exactly the same way as land-based GSM cellular networks,” says Barks, who explains that the flight test was the first to use the GPRS service with an airborne “picocell” – or a wireless base station with low output power designed to cover a small area, such as the inside of an aircraft cabin.
- The US Federal Aviation Administration has awarded Honeywell a $4.5 million modification to its Category 1 local area augmentation system (LAAS) contract to test and demonstrate a new series of algorithms that are designed to overcome integrity issues, which had threatened to undo the project.
Although the FAA selected Honeywell as prime contractor in May 2003 for the development and manufacture of the LAAS precision approach and landing system, it “redirected” the LAAS programme into research and development in February 2004, citing technical challenges and cost as the reason.
Source: Flight International
