Telefonix PDT Accelerates Onboard Gigabit WiFi for IFEC with the Introduction of an 802.11ac, Wave 2 Cabin Wireless Access Point

Hamberg, DE | April 3, 2017– The Telefonix PDT team ushers in greater network performance for airline customers with the introduction of the CabinACe-2™ wireless access point (WAP), the industry’s first 802.11ac Wave 2 WAP for the aircraft cabin environment. The CabinACe-2 product provides dynamic Multi-User Multiple Input/Multiple Output (MU-MIMO), significantly boosting network capacity. The company’s new IFEC hardware is the only Wave 2, ARINC 628 compliant WAP available on the market today, making it the first to meet the industry’s latest adopted standard for electrical characteristics and interfaces, RF performance, size, weight, and power.

With airline customers demanding high bandwidth applications, for example high-definition video streaming, airline network architects are being challenged to support increasing WiFi capacity performance requirements. Additionally, the introduction of new, Wave 2 client devices, which offer higher 802.11ac performance, requires the right kind of network intelligence to take advantage of new MU-MIMO-capable mobile devices by steering and grouping them together – thus improving the efficiency of the available bandwidth. The new Telefonix PDT CabinACe-2 product is the Telefonix PDT answer to this challenge.

Leveraging Wave 2 to Support #GenMobile with High-flying Wi-Fi
Where 802.11ac, Wave 1 offered a drastic jump in network performance over 802.11n with 80 MHz channel bandwidth and support for up to 3 spatial streams, 802.11ac, Wave 2 promises to offer another leap in improvement over Wave 1. Wave 2 technology has the potential to offer double the bandwidth (to 160 MHz), support for 4 spatial streams, and features MU-MIMO, which will support the bandwidth and capacity requirements of emerging applications for years to come.

To prepare for the anticipated adoption of Wave 2 devices, the CabinACe-2 access point engine incorporates intelligent awareness technology for Wave 2, MU-MIMO clients, automatically steering and grouping MU-MIMO devices together. This ClientMatch® technology allows the unit to transmit data to multiple Wave 2 – enabled devices simultaneously, which not only improves individual device performance, but it will also boost the overall network efficiency. The result is up to 42 percent improvement in performance over other cabin wireless access point solutions without ClientMatch technology.

Availability
Telefonix PDT is proud to announce that the CabinACe-2 product is already in commercial production. DO-160G testing has been completed, along with an extensive Boeing Line Fit offerability test program. Additional STC retrofit projects for additional product configurations will begin later this year.

“This is a really exciting time at Telefonix PDT and in our industry,” says Alan Manns, Director of Business Development for Telefonix PDT. “Technology moves very quickly, both on the ground and in the air. The introduction of our CabinACe-2 product is a testament to the commitment of Telefonix PDT to remaining a technology forward provider of IFEC hardware. This commitment is one of the reasons that the company is moving towards the head of the line in terms of delivery of cabin wireless access points in the next 12 months.”