In the current aeronautical communications context, there is an increasing interest in offering new services to civil aircraft. For instance, airlines are looking into new solutions to back up flight data and cockpit voice records during the flight, or to provide more accurate meteorological data to pilots. Being able to offer Internet access to passengers is also a major demand from these companies. All these services represent new types of air-ground communications that require newcommunication systems. Indeed, traditional datalink systems are based on a direct airground link (e.g. VDL Mode 2) or on a satellite link (e.g. L-Band Inmarsat satellites).They all have limits in terms of capacity, coverage and cost. In this thesis, we study aeronautical ad hoc networks. They have recently been proposedas a new solution for future air-ground communications. The idea of such networks is to introduce wireless links between aircraft. This system can be seen as a mobile ad hoc network whose nodes are civil aircraft in flight. Each aircraft is able to act as a router to send data hop-by-hop to the destination. Such a solution would improve the coverage of conventional cellular solutions in continental area. It is also applicable to oceanic areas, where the only available solutions are now satellite and HF. The costs of deployment and maintenance would be relatively low because the ground infrastructure is limited. In this thesis, the feasibility of this innovative aeronautical communication system is investigated. A simulation tool has been developed to study the network connectivity, based on actual aircraft positions data both in continental and oceanic airspace.
