U.S. Patent No. 7,113,780 – System For Integrating An Airborne Wireless Cellular Network With Terrestrial Wireless Cellular Networks And The Public Switched Telephone Network (Sept. 26, 2006)

The Non-Terrestrial Feature Transparency System, located onboard the aircraft, provides the full functionality of a given wireless subscriber’s home network, which has a certain predetermined feature set from a ground-based wireless service provider, at that wireless subscriber’s device when in a non-terrestrial mode. This mirroring of wireless subscriber device attributes enables a localized cell for in-cabin communication yet retains the same wireless subscriber device attributes for the air-to-ground link. All of the digital cellular platforms supported by Applicants’ system have out-of-band signaling paths while subscriber traffic is carried in-band. An important aspect of Applicants’ system is that it provides the use of radio frequency communications from wireless communication devices to implement data communications connections from the wireless communication devices to a packet-data switch (Internet) which is located on the ground.