A Low-Cost Weather Datalink: Experimental Results

For tens of thousands of light aircraft, a graphical weather avoidance system is not available either because of structural or economic constraints. A Datalink system that transmits weather radar graphical data to a display in the aircraft offers a good solution. Many current proposals are however either quite costly to implement either on the ground, in the aircraft or both.

We present here the results of experiments conducted to develop a system that uses the audio channel of a receiver commonly installed in the aircraft as well as ground stations already part of the National Airways System. The experiments cover the channel requirements, tradeoffs between image resolution and bandwidth, and the effects of noise.