Communications & IT
believes senior expert at Eurocontrol,
Liviu Popescu. He says, “OSI was not
widely used, so there is less risk of
hacking. Hackers would first have to
teach themselves the system.
“But IP is the technological layer
supporting all communication in the
world. So, the risk for vulnerabilities to
hacking, at least theoretically, increase.”
In practical terms, the widespread use
of IPS also brings with it advantages, says
Popescu since “there are lots of proven
security solutions that have been
developed to counter the threat”.
“We won’t have to reinvent the wheel,”
he says. “We can benefit from the
solutions already out for other safety or
security critical industries like the
military, banking or energy.”
On top of the conventional cyber
security measures the new
communications technologies will have
an added security layer built in through
operating on a protected frequency.
Pouzet says, “It’s against the law to sell
equipment that can operate on this
frequency for any other use than aviation.
This means you couldn’t connect to this
network with your laptop at the airport
because your computer won’t recognize
the frequency.”
INTRODUCTION TIMELINE
While there are no fixed dates for when
the migration to IPS will take place,
“There will be at least three different
communication links operating in
different frequency bands, potentially
with different protocols”
Jacky Pouzet, head of the communication and frequency coordination unit at Eurocontrol
Eurocontrol predicts that full deployment is unlikely to
take place before 2030. While the time frame for airground
communication might seem a long way off it is
important to note that IP-based ground-ground
communication is already well-established in aviation,
for example amongst European ANSPs. “We started the
work on standardization of VOIP ground-ground air
traffic management communications about 15 years ago.
We’re now at the end of the standardization cycle and
we’re starting the deployment,” says Popescu.
A ground-ground data link between European air
traffic controllers known as the ATC Inter-Centre Data
Communication is already 90% migrated to IP, says
Popescu. Meanwhile, IP-based voice communication,
known as Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), is about
60% migrated.
In the USA, the migration to VOIP is just getting
under way. As part of this migration the FAA held an
interoperability event in May 2019 in Atlantic City, New
Jersey, where 14 vendors from around the world tested
the interoperability of their communications equipment
56 DECEMBER 2019 \\ AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM
using the ED-137 standard, a VOIP standard developed
by EUROCAE.
“Over the two weeks we had around 1,400 test cases,
where we paired vendors to see if their products could
operate together,” says Dieter Thigpen, air-ground
voice communications manager at the FAA. “So if you
took a voice switch from one vendor and a recorder from
another they were given some pre-defined test scenarios
that would be run to validate that they could talk to
each other.”
According to Thigpen the event proved a success,
although he acknowledges that the USA still has some
way to go before IP-based communications can be
implemented in aviation. “The event that took place was
looking at the end equipment that hooks to the phone
lines,” says Thigpen. “But we’re getting ready to put out a
Request for Bid on a new telecommunications system
that would then bring the IP core to the FAA. We’re just
getting on that road now because the whole
telecommunications system needs to go IP as well as all
the edge equipment.” \\
2 // A FAA-organized event
held earlier this year saw 14
suppliers of VOIP technology
test the interoperability of
their systems 2
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