Gogo Business Aviation LLC

Matthew J Dufner

Yong Liu

Michael H Baker

James P Michels

Heinz A Miranda

Francis Forest

Alan Mak

An aircraft-mounted mobile communicator for communicating with one or more satellites or base stations is disclosed. The aircraft-mounted mobile communicator includes a radome structure and one or more antenna elements embedded within or proximate to a shell of the radome structure that maximizes an aperture of the one or more antenna elements, wherein the one or more antenna elements are configured to operate over one or more frequency bands.

Antenna embedded in a radome

A first beam is implemented, from a set of vehicle-based antennas, for current or future communication with a ground-based or satellite-based network via an external antenna (e.g., of a base station or satellite). A second beam may be implemented to detect or determine a better pointing angle for the first beam, thereby 'fine tuning' the pointing angle for the first beam. Specifically, the second beam may be 'swept' through a range of pointing angles while a signal parameter representing signal quality or strength is measured, detected, or calculated at each pointing angle. The values for the signal parameter may be evaluated to identify a desired value and the pointing angle at which the desired value was obtained. The first beam may be reoriented or repointed at the desired pointing angle, and one or more nodes of vehicle-based communication system may communicate with an external network via the first beam.

Beam pointing fine tuning for vehicle-based antennas

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Elmhurst, IL, United States of America

Matthew J Dufner