5G wireless infrastructure is making its way into air-to-ground (ATG) networks and onboard equipment. Gogo Business Aviation has accomplished several milestones in its effort to develop 5G, including installing two 5G antennas on a tower to conduct testing of system performance. The Gogo 5G network, which is being designed for aircraft operating within the contiguous United States, is expected to go live in the second half of 2022.
The 5G network will be Gogo’s fourth ATG nationwide network over the last 28 years. In 2019, it selected Airspan Networks to build and develop its 5G network, which is designed for use on business aviation aircraft, commercial regional jets and smaller mainline jets.
“Deploying this first ground site antenna will enable us to validate our design for a smooth product and service launch,” said Dave Glenn, Senior Vice President of Customer Operations for Gogo.
The Gogo 5G system will use the Airspan Air5G carrier-grade platform, which will provide 5G standalone mode operation using virtualized RAN base station technology and Massive MIMO antenna arrays. Using advanced beamforming and tracking techniques, the system can communicate to an aircraft travelling in excess of 745 mph, according to Airspan.
Gogo has developed its 5G air card prototypes and recently completed coast-to-coast flight testing of its 5G belly-mounted antennas to validate their performance. Additionally, Gogo conducted a flight test and successfully established a connection between the 5G antennas on the aircraft and the 5G antennas on the ground tower.
“The tests we’ve conducted and successfully passed validate what we modeled when we initially announced we would build a 5G network,” said Mike Syverson, Senior Vice President of Engineering for Gogo.
Gogo has also successfully performed an end-to-end call using a 5G SIM card, from the onboard equipment to the cell site, through the data center to the internet and back.
“What we’ve done is validate that our systems can talk to one another,” Syverson continued. “The antennas can talk to the cell site, which in turn can talk to the data center. There is a lot of software development to put those pieces together, and it’s all working very well.”
Currently, there are 2,000 business aircraft flying with Gogo’s AVANCE L5 or L3 system installed, according to the company. As of March 31, 2021, Gogo reported 5,892 aircraft flying with its ATG systems onboard, and 4,614 aircraft with satellite connectivity installed.
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