Partnership Announced For Inflight Email

Custom radio provider Spectrum Signal Processing by Vecima, Burnaby, BC, Canada, announced a partnership with LiveTV LLC to supply its software-defined radios for LiveTV’s inflight email system.

The Kiteline email system by LiveTV, a JetBlue subsidiary, uses a network of air-ground base stations to transmit data from an aircraft cabin to the ground.

With the new, software-defined radios (SDRs), LiveTV will be able to support current voice communications for the general aviation market as well as data services for the commercial and general aviation markets, Spectrum said. Airline passengers will be able to use an on-board Wi-Fi network to connect to the in-flight system, which will route traffic over the Spectrum airborne radio to LiveTV's ground network.

Spectrum said it will base the new radio on a variant of its “flexComm” SDR-4800 family of embedded radio modules. The radio will utilize System-On-Chip and embedded RF technologies to produce a compact, ruggedized solution. The radio is software reprogrammable, allowing LiveTV to update the system in the future via software.