Title: Multi-channel Combining for for airborne flight research using Standard Protocols
Presenting Author: William D. Ivancic
Organization: NASA Glenn Research Center

Abstract:
NASA's airborne science research aircraft, such as the Global Hawk, DC-8 and P-3, use custom channel combining of Iridium satellite phones to continuously monitor science payload and housekeeping data as well as science payload power control and reporting. This technology is also used for aircraft control. The current systems have known problems, which results in inefficient data delivery and issues with reliability – particularly when attempting to use standard Internet protocols to login and control. The Internet community recently announced an experimental protocol, multipath-TCP. We propose to characterize the current Iridium modems and model those channels. We will then evaluate multipath-TCP as a generic solution to the channel-combining problem (when using TCP). Since the aircraft often utilize UDP for data handling, we will also evaluate the techniques inherent in multipath-TCP to develop standardized multipath-UDP. Multipath-UDP would provide a standardized channel-combining technique when using applications that have UDP-based datagram delivery.