Honeywell and Inmarsat Design Advanced Antenna with Kymeta
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In aerospace, Honeywell tends to be known primarily for hardware, as a manufacturer of auxiliary power units, jet engines, environmental control systems and many other cabin elements, but according to Jack Jacobs, vice-president, Marketing and Product Management, Honeywell Aerospace, this is the year for Honeywell Connectivity. “This is the year because the last satellite goes up in May (from Inmarsat), and then it goes fully operational in September, so we’ll have global coverage then.”
In the second half of this year, Honeywell’s systems will be installed on aircraft. “Several airlines have already picked us,” says Jacobs. “Qatar has picked us, Vietnam, Air China, Bombardier from a business jet perspective… and there’s others that are in the works right now.”
On the first day of exhibition at Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Honeywell jointly announced a collaboration with Inmarsat and Kymeta on the development of a higher-speed Ka-band wireless antenna for commercial aircraft and business jets. The flat antenna is designed to weight and drag on aircraft, lowering fuel and maintenance costs. Its compactness allows for compatibility on a wider variety of aircraft. “This will be the first truly flat-panel antenna for aviation that will offer great performance at the right price,” explains Leo Mondale, president, Inmarsat Aviation.
The antenna will complement Honeywell’s JetWave Ka-band GX Aviation Satellite Communications product line, which offers global broadband coverage powered by Inmarsat’s Global Xpress Network and Inmarsat’s new Ka-band i5 FX Aviation Network. Designed to offer flexibility, the terminal is available in two different configurations, either a fuselage-mount antenna system for larger aircraft or a tail-mount antenna system for smaller corporate and business aircraft.
“I think in connectivity today, Honeywell offers a great portfolio,” Jacobs says. “What makes us unique as a company is we have a lot of mechanical systems on the plane – breaks, environmental controls, auxiliary power units in business aviation, and we have a lot of avionics in the cockpit… So we store and record information, we can disseminate and do things with it, and now we’ve got the connectivity pipe through Global Xpress and through our swift broadband and air-to-ground. We’re probably the only company that can put those things together.”
In March, Honeywell’s GX Aviation hardware successfully completed high-speed data over-the-air performance tests. “This is not only a milestone for the whole GX Aviation programme, but it’s also a great demonstration of what GX Aviation brings to the table,” said Mondale.
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AIX conference photography: Maxim Sergienko / Raum 11