Unicast multimedia transmission on-board a business jet

Abstract

Wireless networks provide the technology that allows the service provisioning of a variety of multimedia streaming applications to mobile stations. In recent years, aircraft manufacturers have been evaluating the possibility of offering this technology on-board their aircrafts. The gained benefits translate into reduced cable complexity, especially in the business jet scenario, where each aircraft has to be customized for the user, and increased passenger satisfaction with upgrades in the infotainment system and services. Wireless networks have bandwidth constraints, which limits the transmitted data rate. To satisfy this limitation, the Joint Video Team (JVT) has developed the H.264/AVC standard, which offers a higher compression ratio for video applications when compared to other coding standards. Different multimedia applications have different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements; for example live conferencing requires an end-to-end delay of less than 200ms while streaming accepts 1s of delay. The radio propagation coverage map of the network on its own is not enough to ensure that the passenger will have adequate QoS. A precise network analysis is therefore required to give an insight on the end-to-end delay, link utilization and throughput performance of the transmission system inside the aircraft.

In this paper, we present the simulation model developed by the University of Malta to assess the QoS of multimedia wireless transmission inside a Dassault Aviation business jet. A Matlab® based discrete-event simulator (DES) was developed to model the network traffic. The model considers the IEEE802.11a standard and uses the basic Distribution Coordination Function (DCF) access scheme. H.264/AVC video coding is employed for the video streaming application. The delay analysis demonstrates that the QoS requirements for streaming applications are attained. Furthermore, the resulting Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratios (PSNR) indicate that satisfactory video quality is experienced by the passengers at different locations inside the aircraft.