Methods and apparatus for wireless upload and download of aircraft data

Abstract

A method for wirelessly communicating data between a plurality of avionics units on an aircraft and a data communication apparatus. The method includes wirelessly communicating download data for one avionics unit from the data communication apparatus to an aircraft data services link in the aircraft; automatically switching a communication path from the aircraft data services link to the avionics unit responsive to the download data; and electronically communicating the download data from the data communication apparatus to the avionics unit via the automatically switched communication path.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 268,085, filed Feb. 13, 2001, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 075,083 filed on Feb. 12, 2002, which is incorporated herein by reference. This application is also related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 075,032, filed on Feb. 12, 2002, which is also incorporated by reference in its entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention relates to communications systems, and more particularly to methods and apparatus to facilitate loading and acquisition of data relating to aircraft loadable computers. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] Digital computers on recent airplane models require frequent software updates. Flight management computers (FMCs) were among the first of these computers to have periodic updates performed. Originally, these updates were...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0020] Various implementations and configurations of the present invention provide automatic uploading and / or downloading of data from and / or to ground stations using a wireless communication link, without requiring extensive rewiring or redesign of existing aircraft.

Problems solved by technology

Nevertheless, it was soon recognized that portable tape loaders were slow, large and cumbersome.

However, bandwidth for this technology still lags that provided by broadband satellite data communications.

However, one problem with designs of this type is that only raw parametric data out of the DFDAU is available.

When numerous new wiring, LRUs and supporting components are added to production aircraft, aircraft manufacturers incur large, non-recurring costs.

Thus, some data movement issues on the aircraft side remain and some existing features, available in other known avionics LRUs, are not fully utilized.

Known systems do not provide integration of these routing functions.

Because of the need for manual intervention to operate switches to provide connectivity between avionics units, providing automatic uploads of avionics data from aircraft to ground stations via wireless communication links would require extensive rewiring of existing aircraft.

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