Achieving QoS for aeronautical telecommunication networks over differentiated services

Aeronautical Telecommunication Network (ATN) has been developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization to integrate Air-Ground and Ground-Ground data communication for aeronautical applications into a single network serving Air Traffic Control and Aeronautical Operational Communications.(1) To carry time critical information required for aeronautical applications, ATN provides different Quality of Services (QoS) to applications. ATN has been designed as a standalone network with its own protocols which requires building an expensive separate network for ATN. However, the cost of building ATN can be reduced if it can run over a public network such as the Internet. Although the current Internet does not provide QoS, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is standardizing the Differentiated Services (DiffServ) network to provide differential QoS to users of next generation data networks. The objective of this paper is to investigate the possibility of providing QoS to ATN applications when it runs over the DiffServ network in the next generation Internet. Our results show that the QoS requirements of ATN applications can be successfully provided when they run over a DiffServ backbone in the next generation Internet.