Verizon Communications Inc.
Systems and methods for providing network access to aircraft

Abstract:

A system described herein may generate a map of ground stations and associated antenna beams along a flight path. Such map generation may include assigning a unique identifier to each antenna beam and associating an absolute or relative location to each beam. As an aircraft traverses the flight path, the map may be utilized to identify candidate serving ground stations and/or candidate antenna beams, whereby a likelihood of selection may be generated for each adjacent beam to a serving beam. The likelihood of selection may be calculated based on one or more predicted flight paths and associated confidence levels of the predicted flight paths. Flight paths may be predicted based on serving beam history, pre-defined flight path, and/or other relevant factors.