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WirelessCabin: Use Your Mobile Phone on Airplanes
securitas writes "What if didn't have to turn off your mobile phone when you travel by air? eWEEK's Matthew Broersma reports on a European Commission project to enable mobile phone use on airplanes. The technology works by creating short-range 'picocells' that force transmission output power to drop to 1/1000th of normal, reducing electronic interference, then using a satellite uplink. The WirelessCabin project members include the German Aerospace Centre, Siemens, Ericsson and Airbus. Initial trials will use 'GSM, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections' but will add CDMA and 3G standards. WirelessCabin is already making a picocell with CDMA2000. The first demonstrations are scheduled for this summer on Lufthansa long-haul flights with the A340-600 jet."
...a plane crashed to prove it?
There's lots of evidence that phones can interfere with navigation equipment, and from my experience as an audio engineer I can tell you digital cell phones can very easily intefere with electrical equipment, disrupting signals etc.
Nope... there's two bans on phones in flight...
- The FAA doesn't like them because of the longshot theory that radio waves of any kind might just add up to a signal that tricks autopilot or other navigational systems into glitching, causing the plane to crash. That's a long shot risk, but the disaster case is kinda a bad one if it ever happens.
- The FCC also has a ban because when you're in flight, you're always at least 6-8 miles away from the nearest cell tower. You end up communicating with too many towers and bogging down the network. One or two such calls is tolerable, but a whole plane load moving through would disrupt the ground-based users of the network.
This picocell concept solves both problems by moving the nearest cell tower to just a few feet away from the phone. Therefore, the phone kicks into its lowest power setting, and never talks to any other tower.
I've been a pilot for 15 years now and I can tell you without a doubt that cellphones (and most any electronic device) can affect instruments in the airplane. Yes, in this day and age the chances of that have been reduced, but it can still happen.
Broadcasting from a plane is bad from a network point of view because you light up sveral hundred cells at a time. Since you are above them with clear line of sight your signal travels much farther than normal. Most of the time is traveld further than the frequency reuse distance, meaning that you just trashed the capacity of the cellular system.
And yes, it is possible for Cell phones to affect accuracy of onboard instuments in older planes... There is NO GROUND PLANE on an aircraft. You are sitting a nice big faraday cage... so the onlything to absorb your signal is the equipment around you.
From a practical standpoint I would prefer rules that ban Cells on aircraft for comfort reasons... an aircraft is close personal quarters... I really don't want to hear your conversation on a long flight... (AIRRAGE!)