Mention aircraft broadband connectivity and the first thought is Wi-Fi access for passengers. But engineers are already looking beyond updating Facebook and streaming YouTube inflight, toward machine-to-machine communications-the ability for aircraft to talk to aircraft and airborne systems to ground systems automatically, to share data, diagnose issues and make decisions. Long discussed and anticipated, the vision of the connected aircraft is becoming concrete due to the confluence of three wider technology trends: increasing computer power, more storage capacity and expanding communications bandwidth. The latest generation of aircraft generate and store vast amounts of data and now the broadband connection is becoming available to make new uses of that data possible.
展开▼
