UC Riverside Professor Joins $4.8 Million NSF-Funded AERONET Project to Improve Aviation Communications
Why It MattersAviation communications research is shifting toward AI-managed links across cellular, Wi-Fi and satellite, a connectivity layer that business aircraft operating across varied airspace and airport environments would eventually rely on.
A UC Riverside computer science professor, Distinguished Professor Kadangode "K.K." Ramakrishnan, will join a $4.8 million National Science Foundation-funded research effort aimed at making aviation safer by developing smarter and more reliable communications for aircraft and airports. The project, called AERONET (AI-enabled Orchestration of Heterogeneous Networks for Aviation Safety), will explore how artificial intelligence can coordinate 5G cellular, Wi-Fi and satellite networks to provide reliable, low-delay communications in the air and on the ground.
The research addresses the fact that aircraft and airports increasingly depend on a constant flow of digital information, while no single communications network is available or reliable everywhere. An aircraft may have access to cellular, Wi-Fi and satellite connections at different points in a flight, and the quality and availability of those connections change as the aircraft moves. Safety-related information may also need to take priority over less critical communications. AERONET researchers plan to develop an intelligent system that recognizes these changing conditions and automatically adapts.
"Pilots and air traffic controllers depend on receiving critical information quickly and reliably," Ramakrishnan said. "Our goal is to make these communication networks more intelligent and resilient, so important safety information gets through even as network conditions are changing."
Ramakrishnan is also joining a U.S. Department of Energy-funded project announced earlier this year, Science-Aware Network Operations for Research Networks (SciNet), which aims to move large amounts of scientific data more quickly and reliably among laboratories and computing facilities. SciNet is led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with UCR, Caltech and HPE Labs as partners.
