Coverage of cellular communication systems in flight of mobile communication devices located in an airplane

摘要

A network node of a terrestrial cellular system provides telecommunications services to user equipment (UE) in a flying airplane. Navigation information transmitted from the airplane is periodically acquired and includes the airplane's identity, position, altitude, and time to determine the airplane's position. A link is maintained between the network node and the UE by transmitting a beam-steered and Doppler-shift compensated downlink signal and performing beam-steered reception of the uplink signal. Beam steering is directed to the airplane based on the navigation information. Doppler shift compensation is adapted to compensate for Doppler shift so that the UE experiences a nominal carrier frequency when receiving transmissions from the antenna node. Handover from the first to the second coverage area includes using in the second coverage area the same cell identifier and the same frequency assignment as used in the first coverage area. [Selection] Figure 6