Design and Prototype of a Low-Cost Weather Information System for General Aviation

The Boeing Company/ATM Computer Science, 2002-03

Liaison(s): James Hanson ’64, Paul Mallasch
Advisor(s): Geoffrey Kuenning
Students(s): Paul Paradise (PM), Luke Hunter, Kyle Kuypers, Rafael Vasquez

Boeing ATM has tasked us with the design and implementation of a proof-of-concept design for delivering weather data to aircraft pilots in-flight. Using a Pocket PC PDA as a hardware architecture and a custom client and server, we are able to deliver METAR (Meteorological Reports) and NEXRAD (NEXt-generation RADar) to pilots. Our current implementation uses 802.11b wireless technology for the communication, but is ideally suited for satellite-based broadcast as a final product.