Secure aircraft communications addressing and reporting system (ACARS)

• US 6,677,888 B2
• Filed: 08/09/2002
• Issued: 01/13/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 08/09/2001
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Original Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Inventors: Roy, Aloke
• Primary Examiner(s): Tarcza, Thomas H.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Andrea, Brian K
• Application Number:
  US10/215,730
• Publication Number:
  US 20030030581A1
• Time in Patent Office: 522 Days
• Field of Search: 342/36-40, 342/42-51, 342/195, 370/212, 375/253
• US Class Current: 342/36
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/18508 with satellite system used as relay, i.e. aeronautical mobile satellite service
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/30 Compression, e.g. Merkle-Damgard construction
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/80 Wireless
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0841 involving Diffie-Hellman or related key agreement protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3252 using DSA or related signature schemes, e.g. elliptic based signatures, ElGamal or Schnorr schemes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3268 using certificate validation, registration, distribution or revocation, e.g. certificate revocation list [CRL]

Abstract

A method and apparatus that permit military aircraft operators to use the civilian Aircraft Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) technology while ensuring data security.

Claims

1. A secure Aircraft Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) apparatus, comprising:

means for compressing 6-bit data; and

means for converting the compressed 6-bit data for transmission over an ACARS network.

2. The secure ACARS of claim 1 wherein the means for converting the compressed 6-bit data for transmission over an ACARS network further comprises means for converting the compressed 6-bit data into a 8-bit ACARS characters.

3. The secure ACARS of claim 1 wherein the means for compressing 6-bit data further comprises means for applying a compression algorithm to the 6-bit data.

4. The secure ACARS of claim 3 wherein the means for compressing the 6-bit data further comprises means for applying a software algorithm to the 6-bit data.

5. The secure ACARS of claim 4 wherein the compression algorithm is one of a DEFLATE algorithm and a v.42bis algorithm.

6. The secure ACARS of claim 1 wherein the user data comprises 8-bit character-oriented data, and

further comprising means for packing each 8-bit character-oriented data into a 6-bit representation.

7. The secure ACARS of claim 1, further comprising means for encrypting the compressed 6-bit data.

8. The secure ACARS of claim 1, further comprising:

means for transmitting the data over an ACARS network;

means for converting the data for transmission over an ACARS network into compressed 6-bit; and

means for de-compressing 6-bit data.

9. A method for using an electronic circuit to securely convey data between an aircraft and the ground based on Aircraft Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) technology, the method comprising:

a) processing the data as a stream of 6-bit data;

b) with the electronic circuit, compressing the stream of 6-bit data; and

c) with the electronic circuit, converting each 6-bit data into a 8-bit ACARS character.

10. The method recited in claim 9 wherein compressing the stream of 6-bit data further comprises applying a standard compression algorithm to the stream of 6-bit data.

11. The method recited in claim 10 wherein applying a standard compression algorithm to the stream of 6-bit data further comprises applying one of the DEFLATE algorithm and the v.42bis algorithm.

12. The method recited in claim 9, further comprising encrypting the compressed stream of 6-bit data.

13. The method recited in claim 9 wherein the data to be securely conveyed comprises character-oriented data, and

further comprising encoding the character-oriented data into a character-oriented bit stream having each 8-bit character data packed into a 6-bit representation.

14. The method recited in claim 9, wherein converting each 6-bit data into a 8-bit ACARS character generates a stream of 8-bit ACARS characters, and

further comprising transmitting the stream of 8-bit ACARS characters via the ACARS network.

15. The method recited in claim 14, further comprising:

receiving the stream of 8-bit ACARS characters;

with the electronic circuit, packing received data from each 8-bit character to 6-bit character, thereby generating a compressed stream of 6-bit data;

with the electronic circuit, de-compressing the stream of 6-bit data; and

with the electronic circuit, encoding each 6-bit data to an 8-bit ACARS character.

16. A computer program residing on a computer usable storage medium for transmitting data on the Aircraft Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), the computer program comprising:

computer-readable program code means for receiving one or more signals representative of user bit-oriented data as a stream of 6-bit characters;

computer-readable program code means for compressing the stream of 6-bit characters; and

computer-readable program code means for converting each 6-bit character of the stream of 6-bit characters into a 8-bit ACARS character.

17. The computer program of claim 16 wherein the computer-readable program code means for compressing the stream of 6-bit characters further comprises computer-readable program code means for applying a standard compression algorithm to the stream of 6-bit characters.

18. The computer program of claim 17 wherein the computer-readable program code means for applying a standard compression algorithm to the stream of 6-bit characters further comprises applying one of the DEFLATE algorithm and the v.42bis algorithm.

19. The computer program of claim 16, further comprising computer-readable program code means for encrypting the compressed stream of 6-bit characters.

20. The computer program of claim 16 wherein the data to be transmitted comprises character-oriented data, and

further comprising computer-readable program code means for encoding the character-oriented data into a character-oriented bit stream having each 8-bit character data packed into a 6-bit representation.

21. The computer program of claim 16 wherein the computer-readable program code means for converting each 6-bit character into a 8-bit ACARS character further generates a stream of 8-bit ACARS characters, and

further comprising computer-readable program code means for causing the stream of 8-bit ACARS characters to be transmitted via the ACARS network.

22. The computer program of claim 21, further comprising:

computer-readable program code means for means for receiving the stream of 8-bit ACARS characters;

computer-readable program code means for packing received data from each 8-bit character to a 6-bit character, thereby generating a compressed stream of 6-bit characters;

computer-readable program code means for de-compressing the stream of 6-bit characters; and

computer-readable program code means for encoding each 6-bit character to an 8-bit ACARS character.

23. A computer program product, comprising:

a computer-usable medium having computer-readable code embodied therein for configuring a computer processor, the computer program product comprising;

computer-readable code configured to cause a computer processor to receive a bit stream of 8-bit character-oriented ACARS user data;

computer-readable code configured to cause a computer processor to encode each 8-bit character in the bit stream of 8-bit character-oriented user data into data having a 6-bit representation, resulting in a bit stream having 6-bit orientation;

computer-readable code configured to cause a computer processor to compress the resulting bit stream of 6-bit data; and

computer-readable code configured to cause a computer processor to converting each 6-bit representation in the resulting bit stream into a 8-bit ACARS character, thereby generating a bit stream of 8-bit ACARS characters.

24. The computer program product of claim 23, further comprising:

computer-readable code configured to cause a computer processor to process the generated bit stream of 8-bit ACARS characters by converting each 8-bit ACARS character into a 6-bit representation, thereby generating a bit stream of 6-bit data;

computer-readable code configured to cause a computer processor to de-compress the resulting bit stream of 6-bit data; and

computer-readable code configured to cause a computer processor to encode each 6-bit representation into a 8-bit character, resulting in a bit stream of 8-bit character-oriented user data.

25. The computer program product of claim 24, further comprising:

computer-readable code configured to cause a computer processor to encrypted/authenticate the bit stream of compressed 6-bit data; and

computer-readable code configured to cause a computer processor to decrypt/authenticate the de-compressed bit stream of 6-bit data.

26. The computer program product of claim 23 wherein the computer-readable code configured to cause a computer processor to compress the resulting bit stream of 6-bit data further comprises a standard compression algorithm.

27. The computer program product of claim 26 wherein the standard compression algorithm further comprises one of a DEFLATE algorithm and a v.42bis algorithm.