Air Ground Data Link VHF Airline Communications and Reporting System (ACARS)Preliminary Test Report

摘要

An effort was conducted to determine actual ground to air, and air to groundperformance of the Airline Communications and Reporting system (ACARS), Very High Frequency (VHF) Data Link System. Parameters of system throughput, error rates, and availability were measured by tabulating statistics of messages ranging from 2 to 150 bytes in length. The intervals of transmission were developed based on anticipated air traffic service (ATS) requirements for tactical air traffic control (ATC) messages and their associated replies. Overall, the average round trip message delay fell in the range of 10 to 20 seconds, with 5 out of approximately 2300 messages lost. Aeronautical Radio Inc. (ARINC) did not endorse these tests, indicating that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) tests did not take advantage of the capabilities of the ACARS network which has been optimized for airline use.