Simulating electromagnetic field inside small aircraft from wireless camera equipment

Abstract

The proliferation of wireless systems has urged the aviation industry to consider the exploitation of such a technology to introduce new services and to curtail its cabling weight requirements. Nevertheless, prior to implementing such communication systems, manufactures must ensure that the paramount criterion of aircraft safety is unaffected and thus the potential electromagnetic (EM) field posed on aircraft equipment must be carefully assessed and respective countermeasures taken. To this end, this paper adopts a frequency-domain based three-dimensional ray tracing algorithm, based on geometrical optics to compute the EM field generated from the use of wireless camera equipment transmitting at 2.4 GHz inside the cabin of a typical business jet. The model comprehensively considers the various propagation methodologies utilized by multipath signals to provide a holistic understanding of the resultant average field strength incident at each location inside the fuselage.