Patent ID: 7177939

Claim:
A method of providing data communication services, comprising: establishing a radio communication path between a moving object and a ground station using a data communication server co-located with the moving object, the data communications server including a plurality of interface units for accessing different data networks including an Ethernet interface unit, an ISDN interface unit, and a pre-determined wireless data network interface unit; said step of establishing including: sending a channel request signal, via the ISDN interface unit and a communication unit, to the ground station; and receiving an acknowledgement signal via the ISDN interface unit and the communication unit, including a channel assignment, back from the ground station indicating a channel is being made available and being assigned for the radio communication path; transmitting data to and receiving data from said ground station over said packet data network, said data including either of user information or moving object operation information; wherein said data communication server includes software architecture including software functional layers, the layers including a system resources layer, a system services layer, an application programming interface layer, and an application layer; the system resources layer to communicate with the systems services layer and including a device driver for data exchange with onboard avionics, the system services layer to provide services including at least one of avionics standards services, data compression and cryptographic services, and to communicate with the onboard avionics by way of the device driver, and the application programming interface layer including objects corresponding to aircraft services; wherein a client-side object in the application layer includes a communicator to request a service from the application programming interface layer; wherein a receptor in the application programming interface layer is to respond to the request; and wherein the objects include objects for retrieving time-sensitive information for a user, a FMS (Flight Management System) object for database loading, and FOQA (Flight Operations Quality Assurance) object for obtaining and managing ACMS (Aircraft Condition Monitoring Systems) data.