Enabling Internet Surfing for Civil Aviation: The Last Piece of the Coverage Puzzle

Because of the ever-increasing goal of obtaining global coverage and upgrading terrestrial communication systems, delivering universal and cost-effective data services in civil aircraft has become crucial. This is seen as an important piece in establishing seamless data coverage globally and has gained considerable attention. In this article, our objective is to propose communication frameworks that will offer high-quality internet service to aircraft passengers. The development of satellites and high-altitude platforms could be implemented to provide data coverage on civil aircraft. Terrestrial networks, e.g., developing the sixth generation of wireless communication techniques, can also play a vital role in such communication systems. In this article, we first investigate the properties of civil aircraft airlines before proposing communication frameworks for different categories of civil aircraft communications. The performance of energy consumption, latency, and outage probability is then evaluated to demonstrate these methods’ pros and cons. Finally, the key challenges and research directions for the future have been discussed and analyzed.