Overview
IFC (In-Flight Cabin) systems were often limited to business and first classes in 2000. They consumed 60 W per passenger, weighed more than 15 kg per passenger, had sometimes insufficient reliability and cost around 7000 Euros per seat.
However, the services provided were so popular that they were extended to the whole aircraft (like Airbus A380, Boeing 747/777, etc., each with hundreds of passengers).
On the other hand, more and more basic information technologies (Internet access through laptop, PDA, WIFI systems) were going to move on-board once 'enabling technologies' are reality (broadband communications paths, on-board infrastructure, digital LAN, etc.). These technologies would allow taking benefit directly on-board at the seat level of a large set of services already widespread on ground.
Quality of service is a major issue for everyone (aircraft manufacturers, airlines, passengers, etc.). A particular effort has still to be done in that field (reliability, availability, maintainability, etc.).
The ANAIS project aimed at developing a new standard of IFC (In-Flight Cabin) system providing services to up to 1000 passengers and to the crew members.
Passenger services included video-on-demand, Internet access, e-mails, games, etc.
Crew services include passenger control, IFC system control and maintenance.
An additional objective was to federate the several existing analogue and digital distribution systems (audio/video, control & command, phone) into one unique high throughput fault tolerant digital distribution network that should be linked to existing legacy systems: OIS (On-board Information Systems), avionics, satellite communication systems.
Beyond fault tolerance, availability of the system is a particular requirement of the airlines that have been disappointed by current systems.
The ANAIS project has also put a special effort on offering significantly lowered weight, volume and power consumption compared to existing systems.
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The ANAIS project included a system study (requirements, embedability of candidate technologies for IFC products, standardisation, modularity, and scalability) and the realisation of a representative technology test bed, allowing selected technological solutions to be evaluated.
The development of the ANAIS test-bed was structured in 4 phases:
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Test-bed specification took into account the requirements and the objective to use COTS products, it encompassed system architecture and implemented services.
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The realisation of the test-bed was split into the 4 main different parts of the system: seats, network, servers, and Cabin Crew Console.
Funding
Results
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Innovative aspects
Innovative aspects of the ANAIS project relate to the integration of various new technologies into a single aircraft-compliant architecture. All the services has been integrated -at the server level, the network level, and the seat level- so that weight, power consumption, and space requirements are minimised, and ergonomics is improved. Electrical consumption per seat, and system weight was reduced by around 50%. This was be made possible by using technology from modern ‘palm’ PCs and advanced local area networks.
The ANAIS test bed has allowed new wireless experiments and connectivity (laptop) at the seat and centralis