[[{“value”:”
In-flight connectivity (IFC) is fast becoming a major arena for innovation and growth. As airlines seek new ways to differentiate and drive revenue through enhanced passenger experiences, seamless satellite connectivity will be essential — and the next leap in antenna technology could decide who leads.
Business leaders bold enough to seize the potential of emerging deep tech advances in this area stand to disrupt and prevail as the market takes shape and the new business models mature. Already, big players in commercial aviation and satellite are making moves. Just this April, Airbus and Amazon announced their joint IFC play. The plan is to enhance the Airbus High Bandwidth Connectivity Plus (HBCplus) offerings with high-speed, low-latency low Earth orbit (LEO) connectivity from Amazon’s Kuiper satellite network.
This move signals a growing shift toward LEO-powered IFC — but does it pay to be an early adopter? Backing a single network with no interoperability between systems, airlines may find themselves locked into vendor-specific ecosystems, unable to flex or scale as demands evolve. Perhaps this is why Airbus has also confirmed Hughes Network Systems IFC services for HBCplus. The partnership, according to Airbus, gives the airline more flexibility in providing connectivity experiences on board its aircraft. Hughes will use its well-known geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) services but crucially, is planning to provide LEO connectivity through Telesat’s Lightspeed constellation.
So having options when aircraft are ordered is a good move, despite extra complexity for the manufacturer. But a choice still has to be made, and scalability and upgrade options depend on a number of factors, some of which may not yet be obvious (new technology breakthroughs and shifting regulations, for example). The winner in the race to be the satellite IFC provider of choice may be the one with the best understanding of the technology landscape and how deep tech can deliver differentiated performance that puts them ahead of the competition not just now, but in years to come. As a recent Telesat article points out, not all IFC is the same. It argues that airlines should choose solutions that are flexible enough to cope with evolving demands and ever higher customer expectations.
So having choices and future-proofed solutions that can scale is important for IFC, but as we know, competition generally drives prices down and leads to increased efficiency and innovation. Operational flexibility through the ability to switch providers will still be key for the commercial success of IFC for airlines.
How can aircraft manufacturers benefit from deep tech to achieve this? Typically, the on-aircraft equipment will be proprietary for the chosen satellite provider. Can IFC systems ever be standardized to a degree that allows service providers to be selected in a modular and competitive way? Indeed, could all the hardware be generic and capable of connecting to any satellite simply by updating software? Not any time soon, is the short answer. It’s possible to support different protocol stacks and application software on a common platform, but different air interfaces and radio frequencies require different hardware to operate efficiently. Multi-mode hardware platforms will eventually emerge as chipsets appear that support the signal processing requirements for different air interfaces, but perhaps the biggest challenge will be the availability of antennas that support the wide range of frequencies required.
Today, there is limited commonality with antennas that support more than one satellite constellation, and there’s no single antenna that can connect to them all. There are therefore trade-offs and, potentially, compromises to be made when selecting an antenna. Our research and development of advanced ESAs shows great promise, but there is still work to be done.
The evolving potential of millimeter wave will play an important role as the IFC race heats up. It will be pivotal in progressing to gigabit-per-second data rates and providing a foundation for the data-intensive services the market demands. To this end, we’re currently developing a millimeter wave dual-polarization frequency division duplex (FDD) antenna on a shared aperture. It will manage downlink and uplink signals simultaneously and independently using novel diplexers, offering flexible band configuration and greater throughput in the 18GHz to 32GHz band. Millimeter wave using FDD is well suited for low-latency, long-distance, high-bandwidth NTNs (non-terrestrial networks). This will bring versatility and the ability to support different constellation types. And the use of metamaterials in antenna designs shows great promise for the development of wideband antennas that can operate across the different RF bands used by different satellite operators.
More generally, the development of advanced antenna technologies and beamforming — including ESAs and smart antennas — will be the springboard to optimization of NTN performance, enhancing signal quality and coverage while improving network efficiency.
The potency of such technology is shown by our collaboration with Stratospheric Platforms Limited. The world’s largest commercial airborne antenna has been developed to provide wide scale coverage of high-performance 5G at a fraction of the cost of terrestrial networks. Its beamforming elements can deliver coverage to exceptionally targeted areas from an altitude of 20,000 meters. Yet the antenna is light enough to be carried by a zero-emission aircraft weighing no more than a medium-sized minivan.
The race to redefine in-flight connectivity is well under way. To win, airlines, manufacturers and satellite operators must move beyond incremental upgrades and embrace deep tech innovation together. Success will come through bold investment, flexible architectures and cross-industry collaboration that unlocks breakthrough capabilities. In this new era, those who move first and forge the right partnerships won’t just compete — they will reshape the future of connected aviation.
Stewart Marsh is Head of Aerospace at Cambridge Consultants, part of Capgemini Invent and known as the deep tech powerhouse of Capgemini. With more than 20 years of experience in aerospace and telecommunications, Stewart helps companies achieve technology breakthroughs that unlock transformative business value, including a world-first Push-to-Talk satellite service and a beyond visual line-of-sight UAV solution using low-power satellite technology.
SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community’s diverse perspectives. Whether you’re an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion@spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. The perspectives shared in these op-eds are solely those of the authors.
“}]]
Source: Read More