Performance evaluation of direct air-to-ground communication using new radio (5G)

Abstract: Providing mobile broadband (MBB) coverage to passengers in planes (and other yingobjects) has been one of the very important requirements by airline industry for sometime. With the emergence of high-capacity wireless network concepts, there is a renewedeort in dening systems based on 5G (also dened as NR, new radio) for air-to-ground(A2G) communication. When passenger planes have been taken into consideration, a fewhundreds of passengers may need to be supported, thus requiring a high-capacity backhaullink. When 5G is used for such A2G link, beamforming and other advanced physicallayer techniques can be used between the ground stations and ying objects to obtainhigh-data rate and reliable new radio link. This masters thesis work includes link andsystem level evaluations of such NR systems when beamforming, large bandwidth, higherantenna gains, coordination between ground stations, etc., are deployed. The evaluationswere carried out in Ericsson's internal state-of-the-art simulators. The study providesbaseline for system design principles for future A2G system based on NR. Also a properpropagation model for A2G communication has been identied and beamforming solutionwith other related techniques that could be used in A2G scenario have been investigated.