Patent ID: 6642894
Filing Date: 2003-11-04
Classification: H01Q,H04B

Abstract:
An aircraft-based cellular communications system, comprising:a base transceiving station for switching calls to call destinations; an aircraft including a beamformer for generating communications beams, an antenna having a plurality of antenna elements and corresponding amplifiers for transmitting the beams to form terrestrial communications cells that create a link between wireless communications devices within the terrestrial cells and the base transceiving station, and a telemetry link between the base transceiving station and the beamformer; the base transceiving station including a beam shape optimizer for computing a complex gain of the antenna amplifiers based on mapping of the aircraft flight and location data to stored communications coverage cell coefficient data and for transmitting the complex gain to the antenna amplifiers of the beamformer via the telemetry link to control shapes of each of the communications coverage cells.