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For an “end-to-end passenger experience that is secure, seamless and efficient” the International Air Transport Association (IATA) proposes Near Field Communication (NFC) and a single token concept to be enablers for future digital travel. NFC is a wireless technology commonly utilized in Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) and contactless smart cards. It is characterized by the following two attributes: a tangible user interface and secured short range communication. While manufacturers are currently adapting PED settings to enable NFC in the flight mode, the integration and use of this technology in aircraft cabins still remains a challenge. There are no explicit qualification guidelines for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing in an aircraft environment available and there is a lack of a detailed characterization of NFC equipped PEDs.

Aircraft cabin operations shift towards data-driven processes. Cabin-wide multi-system communication networks are introduced to share required data for corresponding novel data-driven applications. Examples are data-driven predictive maintenance applications to reduce the downtime of systems and increase the period of scheduled maintenance or video analytics usage to detect a strained or unruly atmosphere amongst passengers. These applications require a network to transport the associated data and resources for actual computation. Costs and weight have always been the most important factors deciding if new services are introduced within the aircraft cabin. Thus, re-using hardware with free computation capacity that is already installed in the aircraft cabin can target both aspects, weight and costs. Examples for such hardware resources could be the In-flight Entertainment (IFE) equipment being installed in every seat.

Current communication architectures in the aircraft cabin are mostly proprietary and limited to the boundaries of the diverging systems, i.e. existing cabin systems operate mostly isolated from each other. Modern system design, however, requires a shared communication platform in order to enable novel services by means of a contract-based data and information exchange. Data-driven predictive maintenance applications are one example for which the fundamentals are studied intensively, but its integration into a multi-system environment with respect to communication requirements is often neglected. As the aircraft cabin is a highly dynamic environment with changing air pressure, humidity, temperature, and flight attitude, context information is needed in order to get meaningful predictions for e.g. the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of a system, component or item.

In the past, aircraft network design did not demand for information security considerations. The aircraft systems were simple, obscure, proprietary and, most importantly for security, the systems have been either physically isolated or they have been connected by directed communication links. The union of the aircraft systems thus formed a federated network. These properties are in sharp contrast with today’s system designs, which rest upon platform-based solutions with shared resources being interconnected by a massively meshed and shared communication network. The resulting connectivity and the high number of interfaces require an in-depth security analysis as the systems also provide functions that are required for the safe operation of the aircraft. This network design evolution, however, resulted in an iterative and continuous adaption of existing network solutions as these have not been developed from scratch.