Redundant Communication

Redundant Communication

There is currently a pull request to integrate a redundant communication system into the existing ground segment agents: [1]. The goal of this project is to allow multiple radio modems or other links be used between the aircraft and the ground station in a redundant fashion so that even if one link is lost, communication can be maintained. So far, the plane to ground component has been created and tested. The ground to plane component has not been created yet.

Plane to Ground

How to use

In order to implement redundant links using this code, there are three simple steps to follow:

• Connect the hardware - on the airborne side, connect the Rx of the autopilot to multiple radio modems. On the ground side, connect multiple modems as normal (using USB to serial adapters, or whatever).
• Launch a Link agent for each modem. Use two new command line arguments: -redlink and -id. The -redlink flag tells Link that it's one of multiple links. The -id flag lets you specify an integer number as the id of that particular link.
• Launch the Link Combiner agent.

The following screenshot shows a setup with two links, connected to serial ports ttyUSB0 and ttyUSB1, and with id's 1 and 2:

The Agents Running in a Redundant Link Setup