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Future Aeronautical Communications 292 puts a considerable workload on the human controller the air traffic cannot be increased arbitrarily without compromising the safety of the system. This situation is made worse by the fact that the radio spectrum dedicated to aeronautical voice communication is becoming increasingly saturated i.e. even if the human controllers could cope with more air traffic safely, there would not be enough voice frequencies to do so. Excessive controller workload and voice frequency depletion are therefore the main technical problems of the current air traffic control system. The introduction of advanced Air Traffic Management (ATM) procedures and automated support tools will significantly decrease the controller workload. However, advanced ATM r e q u i r e s a i r c r a f t t o b e e q u i p p e d w i t h a c c u rate position determination and collision avoidance equipment as well as data communications to integrate them into the ATM, System Wide Information Management (SWIM) and Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) processes (Helfrick, 2007). Data communications is required as ATM transfers parts of the decision making from air traffic controllers to cockpit crews supported by automated procedures and algorithms (e.g. self-separation). The aircrews must now be provided with timely, accurate, and sufficient data to gain the situational awareness necessary to effectively collaborate in the collaborative decision making process of ATM. This requires the availability of sufficiently capable data links. However, the data link solutions available today cannot provide the capacity and quality of service required for the envisaged system wide information management (Eleventh Air Navigation Conference, 2003). Improved air-ground communication has therefore been identified as one key enabler in the transformation of the current air transportation system to an ATM based Single European Sky.

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