U.S. Patent No. 7,107,062 – System For Managing Call Handoffs Between An Aircraft And Multiple Cell Sites (Sept. 12, 2006)

The handoff management system maximizes the communications capacity available from terrestrial air-to-ground cellular networks, while also integrating communications capabilities from satellite air-to-ground cellular networks and terrestrial cellular communications networks. The communications capacity is maximized by dynamically allocating communications from the aircraft over multiple communications channels to multiple cells of the terrestrial cellular network. This approach effectively provides an increase in the call handling capacity available to any aircraft and permits a gradual transition of communications from one cell to the next cell, rather than requiring an abrupt handover of all traffic from the aircraft from one cell to the next cell. In addition, the handoff management system allocates the communications with the aircraft as a function of the various types of communications (data, voice, control data) to optimize the allocation of types of communications by considering the characteristics of the serving network, including: cost, bandwidth, signal delay, transmission technology, and the like, against the requirements of the call traffic.