The focus of the Department Communications Systems is on “aeronautical communications”, terrestrial mobile radio”, “location and context aware services”, “applications for transport” and „indoor navigation“. Most of these topics combine navigation and communications.

Aeronautical Communications Group A main topic of the research group “Aeronautical Communications” is to develop future digital data link systems for aviation. In particular, new aeronautical communications systems for Air Traffic Control (ATC) and Air Traffic Management (ATM) are designed, evaluated, and prototyped in FPGA technology. The focus of these developments is on OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing) based multi-carrier multiple-access systems, like for example OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple-Access) or OFDM-TDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing Time-Division Multiple-Access). Another main topic is to expedite the global networking of aeronautical data link systems to realize the DLR vision of “networking the sky”. The envisaged global aeronautical network covers not only ATC/ATM but also airline communications (Airline Operational Communication, AOC; Airline Administrative Communication, AAC) and communications for the cabin (Airline Passenger Communication, APC). The work within this topic comprises ad-hoc routing concepts as well as protocol design and validation for IP(v6) based aeronautical networks. Especially, design and optimization in the areas routing, mobility, and security are performed. In addition, the research group acts as advisor of the BMVBW and the German ATC provider DFS within the Aeronautical Communications Panel (ACP) which is the standardization body of ICAO for aeronautical communications. Read more

Cooperative Systems Group The research interests of the “Cooperative Systems” group lie in the area of novel systems that combine robust navigation, ad-hoc communications and information processing. We are addressing applications such as cooperative assistance systems for vehicles, intelligent multi agent systems, ubiquitous and context aware pedestrian navigation, and disaster management. Our work is conducted at experimental, simulative and theoretical levels. Much of our activity in the areas of navigation is at the signal processing level with the goal of assessing and improving the performance of future navigation systems in challenging environmental scenarios such as heavy shadowing and multipath or under interference from other signal sources. Many of the problems we address can be formulated as estimation or decision problems and require a good understanding of underlying models, such as utilities, process and sensor models. We make a strong effort to validate our approaches in real world experiments and early prototypes. Read more

Mobile Radio Transmission Group The Mobile Radio Transmission Group covers terrestrial mobile radio communication systems. Research work focuses on the physical as well as the MAC layer. A further topic of the Group is the integration of Communication and Navigation, i.e., positioning using terrestrial mobile radio systems and exploitation of position information for communications. Read more

Prof. Dr. Uwe-Carsten Fiebig German Aerospace Center Institute of Communications and Navigation, Communications Systems Tel.: +49 8153 28-2835 Fax: +49 8153 28-1871