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Hot Topic: The Blind Men and the Elephant!

I’m sure you have all heard the story about the challenge given to a number of blind men to describe an elephant. The catch was that each man was allowed only one part of the beast to be examined. As one would imagine, the answers came back highly differentiated. Thus an idea for this week’s Hot Topic unfolded. Why not ask three industry experts to contribute a short discourse on the events, and here’s the catch, they did not know that they were in a writing contest. See if you can guess who wrote what, and remember, we did not make this stuff up!

Writer #1: After three years of research, and another three years of drafting, WAEA's Digital Content Management Working Group (DCMWG) received unanimous approval of WAEA Specification 0403, "Digital Content Delivery Methodology for Airline In-Flight Entertainment Systems", at last week's WAEA Technology Committee meeting in Los Angeles. The specification calls for migration into VC-1, MPEG-4 Part 2, and MPEG-4 Part 10 object-based codecs at a minimum data rate of 1.0Mbps. Encoding resolution was codified at "Full D-1" and support is required for both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. A detailed security section was adopted as an informative reference, calling out AES-128 end-to-end encryption, and key management requirements. Considered to be "Part 1" of the spec, DCMWG will now move into Phase 2, reviewing 1) Security Profiles for wired and wireless, fixed and portables, and airline-owned and pax-owned PEDs, 2) Key Management mechanisms, 3) High Definition Content, 4) Mechanics of closed-captioning, and 5) Broadband Delivery to the Aircraft. Industry members wishing to volunteer should contact DCMWG Chair Michael Childers at mchilders@imsconsultants.com. The spec will be voted on by the WAEA Board in March. Here is the spec (PDF, ~456k).

Writer #2: The WAEA’s Technology Committee meeting last week was a real hit, judging from the attendance and from the comments about the meeting from your readers. Besides adopting the spec for Future Content Distribution (you can download the document from the WAEA’s website at http://www.waea.org/forum), the TC dug into the lurking issue of closed captions for deaf and hard of hearing passengers. While the DOT has still not issued its final ruling requiring the captions for IFE content, that rule can not be too far away, so the TC formed a Task Force to get started on defining how captions will be implemented for IFE. The TF is headed by Bryan Rusenko of Crest Digital, and he outlined that the goals for the new TF would include:

1. How the captions would be obtained to start with
2. How they would be delivered to the seat screen
3. How they would be selected by the passenger
4. How they would comply with the DOT ruling

Bryan hosted a lively debate on the subject with airlines, studios, and hardware suppliers all chiming in with their questions and concerns. We heard questions like “Will the captions be English-only? Will they be required by non-US-based airlines too? Will 2-3 lines of text block out too much of the picture on a small seat screen? How will captions be edited for the sanitized airline movies? Why not simply hand out portable players with captioned movies for those passengers who want them? Bryan Rusenko can be heard calling for all those concerned to join his Task Force. You can contact him at bryan_rusenko@crestdigital.com, and stay tuned to IFExpress for more reports as this group digs into captions.

Writer #3: I attended the WAEA Technical Meeting last Wednesday, January 24th at the LAX Hilton. It was pretty good. The first set of presentations was entitled “Wireless Data and Cell Phones Onboard.” AirCell’s Steve Cutbirth gave a good overview of AirCell’s plans to roll out broadband in Q1 2008. The implementation will be in steps as AirCell continues its development of the aircraft system and the rollout of the ground network. Not much technical was presented otherwise.

David Coiley of Aeromobile gave an interesting discussion of their implementation of onboard cell phone systems using picocell technology. David went through a good overview of the “demand” pressures for just such an aircraft service. He also gave a good review of the base station transceiver and the combiner unit to be used on aircraft. Coiley noted that Emirates will be one of the first, if not the first to implement this system. David indicated that the U.S. FCC is currently reviewing Emirates petition to use inflight phones under FCC jurisdiction (presumably U.S. airspace though not so stated). But the most interesting revelation by Coiley was that the Aeromobile CMU has a jamming function which emits “white noise” designed to prevent cell phones from picking up any signals within their bandwidth. This has the potential for being difficult to certify for aircraft, not to mention the problems inherent with EMI and coupling issues in 2nd, 3rd or 4th harmonic of the frequency. The CMU jammer will likely be used, if certified, during Taxi, Takeoff & Landing (TT&L). What is not known, to me at least, is how the airline intends to implement the system on approach and taxi after touchdown? David indicated that there is an “expectation” that cell phones can be used once the aircraft is on the ground but it is not clear what the operational procedures will be for approach and landing. There will be two separate FAA reviews of this entire cell phone usage on aircraft issue. First and most commonly understood by the IFE professionals is the FAA ACO which will look at the system from a DO160E test and qualification perspective. Naturally, the concern is with EMI on other critical systems. I believe the EMI issues will ultimately be worked out. The second FAA entity which will have an interest in the airborne cell phone phenomena is the FAA FSDO (FAA Flight Standards Directorate. The FSDO has the highly important duty and function to oversee that airlines operate their aircraft safely and responsibly. Passenger “convenience” is secondary, notwithstanding the apparent demand outlined by David’s presentation. The FSDO will need to review aircraft operational procedures regarding TT&L and the current prohibition on radiating devices such as cell phones, radios and other emitters. Without a doubt, the FAA FSDO will want “bulletproof” data that there is no interference. This translates to the near certainty that numerous costly flight tests will be required. Please note that I don’t see the FSDO giving a blanket OK to all cell phone usage either. I predict that the FAA will require flight tests on at least every single aircraft type. It could be worse: they could ask for a flight test on every single configuration on each aircraft type. The alternative is a blanket rejection of the service. I suspect a middle ground will be reached which will require testing (Frequency sweeps, max cell phone power tests and others) on each aircraft type with maximum seat density by aircraft type.

In a later presentation, Boeing’s Dr. Shetty and Airbus’ Rolfe Godecke gave overviews of wireless developments at their respective OEMs. The news that Boeing has abandoned its wireless initiative is old news but Dr. Shetty gave a brave front to the multiple inquiries as to why Boeing gave up the wireless implementation. The canned Boeing answer was that the 802.11n standards were not complete. This is what Steven Colbert of the Colbert Report calls “Truthiness” because it sounds true and it is what we are supposed to believe. IFE veterans, PAS’ Phil Watson and Thales Ken Brady gave a good overview of security issues with digital content on their respective systems. The denouement of their discussion was that they will try to do what the studios want them to do but the airlines need to know that it’ll cost them money. Of greater interest to me was the introduction of many new acronyms related to digital security, some of which border on the scandalous. Watson talked about AES with 128 bit “keys” and RSA with 2048 bit “keys.” Brady spoke of something called FIPS Level 3 to prevent address and identity spoofing which sounded very technical until he mentioned a “FIPS 140 Dongle” which conjured up disturbing sexual images probably practiced in France and nowhere else, given that Thales is using a “FIPS 140 Dongle” somehow in their technology. Now I wonder what kind of IFE Thales is REALLY developing.

Editors Note: Our uest writer #3 penned his story on the AeroMobile part of the last WAEA TC meeting without mentioning the issue pointed out in a letter to us by David Coiley, as follows: "Unfortunately your reporter appears to have missed a key point from one of the slides in my presentation: that the AeroMobile system will ONLY be switched on and operational ABOVE 3,000m (approx 10,000ft) in line with telecos regulatory approvals and also avoiding complications with tPEDs (cell phones) being switched on at critical phases of flight. There was a slide to this effect in the presentation which I believe will be on the WAEA website in due course."
 

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Asian Business Aviation Conference & Exhibition
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IFExpress is sponsored in part by: