Patent attributes
A system and related method for minimizing co-channel interference in air-to-ground single-frequency networking includes aircraft-based directional and omnidirectional antenna arrays for transmitting to single frequency networks (SFN) (e.g., LTE, HSPA) and their cell sites. The directional array may encompass several cell sites to take advantage of C-RAN architectures. The system may default to the directional array to establish or re-establish network access, identifying accessible networks and sites and monitoring corresponding synchronization cell counts. The system may minimize co-channel interference with terrestrial network users by switching to the directional array if the count of accessible cell sites or networks becomes high enough, or due to additional factors (e.g., climbing above a threshold altitude). Similarly, the system may switch to the omnidirectional array if the cell count drops below a threshold level.
