NavRadio proposes to develop a system which allows a single aviation VHF frequency to be shared by an existing audio broadcast signal and a VDL Mode 2 digital datalink broadcast system. This will allow addition of datalink broadcast capability to numerous existing facilities, without using any additional frequency spectrum or bandwidth, and without the need for coordination or assignment of new frequencies in potential conflict with existing services. The end result is enhanced effectiveness of the existing facility by adding digital dissemination, and enhanced VHF spectrum capacity by accomplishing FIS data broadcast without use of additional spectrum, thus reserving scarce spectrum for other interactive analog and digital services. The system is designed to be easily retrofitted to existing certificated facilities without change to any hardware or software, except for replacement of the in-lace VHF transmitter with a new one. The proposed product also includes all necessary data interfaces and processing to connect a variety of Flight nformation Services (FIS) data sources to the Shared Bandwidth transmitter, and manage the dual flow of voice and data automatically.
