Due to its reach, satellite communication is a logical candidate for aeronautical voice communication services in most oceanic and remote airspace. One of the more significant challenges to the deployment of satellite ATC voice services in these regions is the development of Direct Controller Pilot Communication (DCPC) party-line voice service with quality acceptable for pilots and controllers while maintaining service pricing levels that are acceptable to the airlines. Aside from the latency incurred during circuit establishment, circuit-switched voice architectures provide the optimal latency performance and voice quality characteristics. However, such voice architectures are prohibitively expensive, especially when considering the number of circuits required establishing a party line. This service cost constraint along with the cumbersome dial up process, which drives the use of a third party in the middle of the pilot controller conversation, relegates current satcom voice to only occasional usage for ATC purposes. The Boeing ATM thesis is that a solution utilizing Voice over IP (VoIP) over a packet switched satellite service will provide a cost effective party-line voice architecture at the cost of increased but acceptable latency for service in oceanic and remote regions. Evaluation of the latency performance of party-line voice services through such packet switched satellites requires detailed analysis and experimentation. Inmarsat, the current provider of safety of life satellite communication services for the aeronautical industry, has recently deployed a packet switched aeronautical communication service called Mobile Packet Data Service (MPDS). In this paper, we evaluate the performance of candidate party-line voice architectures over MPDS, through lab experiments over the current MPDS system, laboratory emulations of potential future enhancements to the MPDS, and computer simulations to verify and extend these concepts to multi-user scenarios.
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