v ACTS Aeronautical Experiments

This paper discusses a series of aeronautical experiments that utilize the Advanced Communication Technology Satellite (ACTS). As part of the ongoing effort to investigate commercial applications of ACTS technologies, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and various industrylgovernment partners developed a series of experiments that utilize the ACTS Mobile Terminal (AMT) [1] and the Broadband Aeronautical Terminal [1] to investigate aeronautical uses of the ACTS. This paper-discusses these experiments including the experiment configurations, technologies, results, and future implications. introduction Since shortly after the launch of the ACTS in September, 1993 the NASA/JPL developed ACTS Mobile Terminal (AMT) has been conducting land-mobile satellite experiments in conjunction with a variety of industry partners [2]. Much has been learned about the land-mobile K/Ka-band communications channel as a result of these experiments [3]. A natural extension of these experiments was to investigate th