Pilot's Guide to Avionics 2014-2015 - 43

Courtesy of Duncan Aviation

Large high-definition monitors display everything from the moving map location of the flight to movies streamed from a passenger's PED.
INSET: In-flight entertainment equipment - from media centers to wireless routers to Blu-ray players - delivers the same quality of content as
consumer equipment at home, but it has been designed, built and certified for aircraft use.

Three-Part Mission
In general aviation, cabin-class jets are the primary
destination for IFE systems, and they can have three
missions: cabin management systems, office and
productivity, and entertainment and relaxation . PEDs have
changed the face of all of them .
CMS controls everything on a circuit, from lights and
temperature to video systems and the galley . In its IFE
work, Duncan Aviation is seeing a move away from the
large push-button style CMS switching stitching panels and
monitors, according to Steve Elofson, a sales consultant
who specializes in IFE . Naturally, switching panels still
control these systems, but they are now software controlled
iPod-like touchscreens . By downloading the necessary app,
passengers also can control the cabin systems without
wires through their PED . Driving this migration is the
growing obsolescence of older push-button CMS switching
systems, for which parts are hard to find or nonexistent .
Voice communication is an essential part of IFE's office
and productivity services . For decades, Magnastar was one
of the go-to systems, according to Elofson . It connects to the
rest of the world through ground stations, he explained, but
Magnastar is retiring its terrestrial network . All other airborne
telephone systems from Aircell, Cobham, Honeywell, ICG

and TrueNorth use satellite connections .
Regardless of who makes the equipment, there are just
two satellite networks that connect aircraft to the rest of the
world, and their connections vary depending on service
plans and data usage . Iridium flies a constellation of 66
satellites in low-Earth orbit that provide a reliable connection
anywhere on the globe . Starting life as Motorola's satphone
system, it employs a small, lightweight transceiver and a
puck antenna comparable to those used for GPS systems .
As such, this phone system can be installed on virtually any
aircraft .
What the Iridium system now lacks is the bandwidth
that can provide a broadband Internet connection . But that
will likely change with Iridium Next, a new constellation of
satellites the company will start launching in 2015, with full
employment scheduled for 2017 .
Inmarsat flies 10 satellites in three constellations in
geosynchronous orbits . With overlapping footprints, they
provide seamless coverage up to 76 degrees north and
south latitude, which encircle but do not cover the North and
South Poles . Inmarsat's Swift Broadband provides voice
and a 432 kilobits per second Internet data connection with

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Pilot's Guide to Avionics 2014-2015

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