Patent attributes
A device can include control channel receiver circuitry to receive airborne vehicle control channel packets, decode circuitry to determine contents of the airborne vehicle control channel packets, transceiver circuitry to provide uplink to and receive downlink data from an airborne vehicle, processing circuitry, and a program for execution by the processing circuitry to perform operations comprising determining, based on data from the receiver circuitry, a received signal strength (RSS) of a signal from each of a plurality of airborne vehicles, determining, for each of the airborne vehicles and based on decoded data from the decode circuitry, a length of time the airborne vehicle will be within transmission range of the transceiver circuitry, determining, for each of the airborne vehicles and based on the determined RSS, determined length of time, and a determined bit-rate, an association metric, and causing association with the airborne vehicle associated with the greatest association metric.