Smart antenna for airborne cellular system
First Claim
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1. An aircraft-based cellular communications system, comprising:
- a base transceiving station for switching calls to call destinations;
an aircraft including a beamformer for generating communications beams, an antenna having a plurality of antenna elements and corresponding amplifiers for transmitting the beams to form terrestrial communications cells that create a link between wireless communications devices within the terrestrial cells and the base transceiving station, and a telemetry link between the base transceiving station and the beamformer;
the base transceiving station including a beam shape optimizer for computing a complex gain of the antenna amplifiers based on mapping of the aircraft flight and location data to stored communications coverage cell coefficient data and for transmitting the complex gain to the antenna amplifiers of the beamformer via the telemetry link to control shapes of each of the communications coverage cells.
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Abstract
An airborne repeater antenna array (70) in which beams transmitted from multiple antenna elements (80) of the array to form terrestrial communications. cells are shaped according to predetermined system parameters. At least one of airplane telemetry data (58) indicating an airplane flight pattern location, adjacent cellular system beam footprint data, and call distribution load within a terrestrial cell are received, and a complex gain is dynamically computed for each of the multiple antenna elements based on such data to thereby output a plurality of beams that form desired geographic communications coverage cells (100, 102, 104, 108).
58 Citations
21 Claims
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1. An aircraft-based cellular communications system, comprising:
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a base transceiving station for switching calls to call destinations;
an aircraft including a beamformer for generating communications beams, an antenna having a plurality of antenna elements and corresponding amplifiers for transmitting the beams to form terrestrial communications cells that create a link between wireless communications devices within the terrestrial cells and the base transceiving station, and a telemetry link between the base transceiving station and the beamformer;
the base transceiving station including a beam shape optimizer for computing a complex gain of the antenna amplifiers based on mapping of the aircraft flight and location data to stored communications coverage cell coefficient data and for transmitting the complex gain to the antenna amplifiers of the beamformer via the telemetry link to control shapes of each of the communications coverage cells. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
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- 9. An optimizer for shaping communications beams transmitted from an airborne wireless communications system repeater antenna array, comprising a processor for computing a complex gain associated with the antenna array based on mapping of repeater location data to stored communications coverage cell coefficient data, and for transmitting the complex gain to the antenna array to optimize shapes of each of the communications coverage cells.
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12. A method of managing operation of an airborne repeater antenna array comprising:
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receiving at least one of airplane telemetry data indicating an airplane flight pattern location, adjacent cellular system beam footprint data, and call distribution load within an airplane beam footprint;
computing desired beam direction and shape parameters based on the at least one of airplane telemetry data indicating an airplane flight pattern location, adjacent cellular system beam footprint data, and call distribution load within an airplane beam footprint; and
calculating complex gains for each of multiple antenna elements to form a set of communications beams each having a desired direction and shape to thereby form terrestrial cells with corresponding locations and shapes. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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20. A method of managing operation of an airborne repeater antenna including multiple planar antennas comprising:
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receiving at least one of airplane telemetry data indicating an airplane flight pattern location, adjacent cellular system beam footprint data, and call distribution load within an airplane beam footprint;
computing desired beam direction and shape parameters based on the at least one of airplane telemetry data indicating an airplane flight pattern location, adjacent cellular system beam footprint data, and call distribution load within an airplane beam footprint; and
calculating a complex gain for multiple antenna elements for each of multiple planar antennas to form a set of communications beams each having a desired direction and shape to thereby form terrestrial cells with corresponding locations and shapes; and
switching beam traffic among the multiple antennas to maintain antenna scan angles within a predetermined range. - View Dependent Claims (21)
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Specification