Evaluation of the Aircraft Distribution in Satellite Spotbeams

Abstract : Upcoming inflight entertainment and other onboard data services request broadband data connections during long- and short-haul flights all over the world. To cope with this amount of traffic, especially over oceanic areas where no ground infrastructure is available, satellite systems offer broadband satellite links for avionic purpose.This work analyzes the distribution of aircraft traffic for selected satellite spotbeams for intercontinental, rural and urban scenarios. For this, the statistic properties of the number of arriving and departing aircraft within a time interval are analyzed. Our results show, that the law of small number and therefore a Poisson distribution is only applicable to areas with low air traffic. Aircraft arrivals to- and departures from satellite spotbeams can be modeled using the negative binomial distribution, as proven by presented results.