One of the main reasons for air to air transmission is because engine data (and potentially blackbox) data is transmitted through inmarsat satellites.
There are two major problems here:
1. when you reach a major transit hub, such as NY airspace the bandwidth is very limited due to the sheer amount of traffic
2. Inmarsats network structure was(is?) like a honeycomb. So the further away you are from the center of each section the worse the transmission characteristics are.
One problem that is rarely looked at is atmospheric interference between satellite and base station.
Anyway, at least problem number two may be addressed by Starlinks vast array of satellites.
It's been a while since I looked at these things though.
> One of the main reasons for air to air transmission is because engine data (and potentially blackbox) data is transmitted through inmarsat satellites.
Lots of HF-DataLink still out there. Funny seeing the pings from on-lease Russian aircraft that Russian airlines seized.
There are two major problems here:
1. when you reach a major transit hub, such as NY airspace the bandwidth is very limited due to the sheer amount of traffic
2. Inmarsats network structure was(is?) like a honeycomb. So the further away you are from the center of each section the worse the transmission characteristics are.
One problem that is rarely looked at is atmospheric interference between satellite and base station.
Anyway, at least problem number two may be addressed by Starlinks vast array of satellites.
It's been a while since I looked at these things though.