Data communication method between a plurality of aircraft

• US 10,334,403 B2
• Filed: 07/31/2014
• Issued: 06/25/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 08/01/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thales SA
• Original Assignee: Thales SA
• Inventors: Carrere, Patrice
• Primary Examiner(s): Appiah, Charles N
• Assistant Examiner(s): Zhang, Xiang
• Application Number:
  US14/448,543
• Publication Number:
  US 20160366563A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,790 Days
• Field of Search: 455431
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/18506 Communications with or from aircraft, i.e. aeronautical mobile service
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4641 Virtual LANs, VLANs, e.g. virtual private networks [VPN] LAN interconnection over a bridge based backbone H04L12/462; encapsulation techniques H04L12/4633; routing of packets H04L45/00; packet switches H04L49/00; virtual private networks for security H04L63/0272
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/622 Layer-2 addresses, e.g. medium access control [MAC] addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/745 Address table lookup; Address filtering
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/201 Multicast operation; Broadcast operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/06 Selective distribution of broadcast services, e.g. multimedia broadcast multicast service [MBMS]; Services to user groups; One-way selective calling services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/40 for vehicles, e.g. vehicle-to-pedestrians [V2P]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/42 for mass transport vehicles, e.g. buses, trains or aircraft
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/22 using selective relaying for reaching a BTS [Base Transceiver Station] or an access point

Abstract

The invention relates to a data communication method between a plurality of aircraft from a set of aircraft, the aircraft being organized according to a plurality of telecommunications, notably radio telecommunication networks, connected to each other through relay stations, each telecommunication network being provided with an identifier specific to the network, the method comprising a step for adding pieces of information in the data to be emitted from an aircraft belonging to a first network of aircraft, the pieces of information comprising the identifier specific to the first network.

Claims

1. A data communication method between a plurality of aircraft of a set of aircraft, the aircraft being organized according to a plurality of wireless telecommunications networks connected together through relay stations, each relay station includes a relay unit between a first wireless telecommunications network of aircraft and a second wireless telecommunications network of aircraft, each wireless telecommunications network being provided with an identifier specific to the network, the method comprising the steps of:

adding pieces of information into data to be emitted from an aircraft belonging to a first wireless telecommunications network of aircraft, the pieces of information comprising the identifier specific to the first wireless telecommunications network;

modifying the pieces of information added into the data, the identifier specific to the first wireless telecommunications network being replaced with the identifier specific to the second wireless telecommunications network, emitting the data through the relay unit when the communication to be established is of a multicast nature or when the communication to be established is of a unicast nature and the aircraft for which the data to be emitted are intended belongs to a wireless telecommunications network different from the wireless telecommunications network whose specific identifier is present in the data to be emitted;

providing each aircraft with a specific identifier, the pieces of information comprising the specific identifier of each aircraft for which the data to be emitted are intended;

emitting the data by an aircraft belonging to the first wireless telecommunications network of aircraft;

comparing the identifiers added in the data with the identifiers respectively specific to the wireless telecommunications network of the second aircraft and to the second aircraft; and

having the second aircraft accept receiving the emitted data when the identifiers added into the data on the one hand and the identifiers respectively specific to the wireless telecommunication network of the second aircraft and to the second aircraft are identical, wherein the modification step is performed by the relay unit.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the pieces of information comprise a piece of information relating to the unicast or multicast nature of the communication to be established with the data to be emitted.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the data include a media access control layer, the step of adding pieces of information is applied by encapsulation of the pieces of information at the media access control layer of the data to be emitted.

4. The communication method according to claim 1, further comprising, a step of calculating the shortest path to be followed for forwarding the data from one aircraft to another aircraft.

5. The communication method according to claim 1, wherein each wireless telecommunication network is a virtual local network.

6. The communication method according to claim 1, wherein the data appear in the form of at least one Ethernet frame and the pieces of information are encapsulated in a field of the header of said or each Ethernet frame.

7. A set of aircraft wherein the aircraft are organized according to a wireless telecommunications networks connected to each other through relay stations, each wireless telecommunication network being provided with an identifier specific to the wireless telecommunications network, the set of aircraft being adapted for applying the communication method according to claim 1.

8. The communication method according to claim 1, wherein the relay units are aircraft of the set of aircraft.