'Project Achilles' - Final Report and Summary of Findings
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by A. K. Dewdney - 19th April 2003
During the early months of the year 2003, the author conducted three experiments to determine whether and how well cellphones could be operated from aircraft. The first flight (Part One) was essentially a probe of the experimental situation, to acquire some primary data and to work out a simple, readily implemented protocol. The results of Part Two (Diamond Katana 4-seater) have already appeared in these pages. The results of Part Three (Cessna 172-R) appear immediately below.
Since this completes the suite of experiments, it is appropriate to summarize the findings and to draw some conclusions. The conclusions are based partly on the experiments and partly on two other sources. (See Appendix B at the end of the report.) Expert opinion and eyewitness testimony are acceptable not only in court, but in certain scientific inquiries where events are of short duration or experiments are too expensive or impossible to carry out. Of course, eyewitness accounts do not carry the same weight as expert opinions or actual experiments, but the eyewitness accounts quoted below seem to be both consistent and compelling.
Disclaimer: The companies hired to assist in this experiment, namely Empire Aviation and Cellular Solutions, both of London, Ontario, Canada, acted as disinterested commercial parties, with no stake in the outcome or even knowledge of the purpose of the tests.
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Part Three - April 19th 2003
The previous experiment, called Part Two, established a distinct trend of decreasing cellphone functionality with altitude. It was conducted in a four-seater Diamond Katana over the city of London (pop. 300,000), Ontario in Canada, an area richly supplied with some 35 cellsites distributed over an area of about 25 square miles. The flight path was an upward spiral, punctuated every 2000 feet (abga) with a level circuit around the outskirts of the city. On each circuit a fixed number of cellphone calls were attempted by an expert operator employing a battery of well-charged phones broadly representative of those on the market both currently and in the year 2001.
(It should be remarked that not only is the cellphone technological base in Canada identical to its US counterpart, but Canadian communication technology is second to none, Canada being a world-leader in research and development.)
The purpose of Part Three was to test the effects of what might be called "Faraday attenuation" on the strength and success of calls. The presence of a metallic shell around some electronic devices can alter their behavior by its ability to attract and store electrons, especially electromagnetic waves. For this reason, the experimental craft was switched from the Katana, which is supposed to be relatively transparent to em radiation, to an aircraft with an aluminum skin, as below.
Equipment:
Cessna 172-R (2002) four-seater (Empire Aviation)
cellphones: C1, C2, C3, C4, C5 (See Appendix A for descriptions.)Personnel:
Corey Barrington (pilot - Empire Aviation)
Darren Spicknell (operator - technician for Wireless Concepts, Inc)
Kee Dewdney (director)
Pat Dewdney (ground recorder)Weather: unlimited ceiling, light scattered cloud at 5,000, solid/broken 24,000 feet, visibility 12 miles, wind 11 knots from SSW, air temperature +19 C.
For this experiment, we flew the same circular route as we did in Part Two, The circle centered on the downtown core and took us over most of the city suburbs. All locations below are referred to the city centre and are always about two miles distant from it.
Protocol:
At times specified by the director, the operator made a call to a specified number, stating the code number of the cellphone (1 to 5) and the altitude. The ground recorder noted whatever was heard and the time the call was received. At the first two altitudes of 2000, 4000 above ground altitude (abga) each cellphone was used once. At 6000 and 8000 feet abga, each cellphone was used twice only C2, C3, and C5 were tried, C1 and C4 being hors de combat.
Results with timeline:
time (pm) call no. C# loc. operator recorder
7:05 - started taxi to runway
7:12 - takeoff
7:15 - at 2000 feet (aboveground altitude)
7:17 Call #1 C1 N success clear, slight breakup
7:18 Call #2 C2 W success clear
7:20 Call #3 C3 SW success clear
7:22 Call #4 C4 S success (2 tries) clear
7:23 Call #5 C5 SE success clear
7:27 - climbed to 4000 feet abga
7:28 Call #6 C1 NE success clear
7:30 Call #7 C2 N success clear
7:31 Call #8 C3 NW "success" (frag) no complete word
7:32 Call #9 C4 W failure no ring
7:34 Call #10 C5 SW success clear
7:35 - climbed to 6000 feet abga
7:39 Call #11 C1 SE success clear
7:41 Call #12 C2 E success clear
7:42 Call #13 C3 E success clear, slight breakup
7:44 Call #14 C4 NE failure no ring
7:44 Call #15 C5 NE failure no ring
7:45 Call #16 C1 N failure no ring
7:46 Call #17 C2 N success clear
7:47 Call #18 C3 NW failure no ring
7:48 Call #19 C4 NW failure no ring
7:49 Call # 20 C5 W success clear
7:50 Call #21 C1 W failure no ring
7:51 Call #22 C2 SW failure no ring
7:52 Call #23 C3 SW failure no ring
7:53 Call #24 C4 S failure no ring
7:54 Call #25 C5 S success clear
7:55 - begin climb to 8000 feet abga (cellphones C2, C3 and C5)
7:55 Call #26 C2 SE failure no ring
7:57 Call #27 C3 E failure no ring
7:59 Call #28 C5 E success clear, slight breakup
8:00 - completed climb to 8000 feet abga
8:01 Call #29 C2 NE failure no ring
8:02 Call #30 C3 NE failure no ring
8:03 Call #31 C5 N failure no ring
8:04 Call #32 C2 NW success clear
8:05 Call #33 C3 NW failure no ring
8:07 Call #34 C5 W failure no ring
8:20 - landed at airport
The following table summarizes the results:
altitude (feet) calls tried calls successful percent success
2000 5 5 100%
4000 5 3 60%
6000 15 6 40%
8000 15 2 13%
Note: calls "tried" includes retired cellphones C1 and C4 above the altitude of 4000 feet where, in the opinion of the cellphone expert, they would have failed to get through, in any case. Failure to include them in the count would make the results at different altitudes non-comparable.
The results of this experiment may be compared to the results from Part Two where, instead of the Cessna, we used the Diamond Katana:
altitude (feet) calls tried calls successful percent success
2000 4 3 75%
4000 4 1 25%
6000 12 2 17%
8000 20 1 5%
To make the results comparable, however, cellphone C5 was omitted from the calculations, since it was not used in the first experiment.
altitude (feet) calls tried calls successful percent success
2000 4 3 75%
4000 4 1 25%
6000 12 2 17%
8000 12 1 8%
Analysis
Since the (1.5 mm) skin of the Cessna appears to have made little difference to the outcome of the experiment, the data of Parts Two and Three may be combined, as follows, to produce more reliable figures for the battery of test phones that were used in the experiment:
altitude (feet) calls tried calls successful percent success
2000 9 8 89%
4000 9 4 44%
6000 27 8 30%
8000 35 3 9%
The data from the first three altitudes appear to fit an inverse-linear model of attenuation. In other words, the probability of a call getting through varies inversely as the altitude, according to the formula:
Probability of success = k/altitude, where k is a constant
It will be noted that the values of k implied by these data, at least up to 6000 feet abga are remarkably consistent. However, at 8000 feet the k-value falls precipitously, implying that a different regime may be in play.
altitude (feet) k-value
2000 1780
4000 1760
6000 1800
8000 720
The expected model of attenuation with distance is of course inverse squared, a natural consequence of the three dimensions that any uniform radiation must travel through. Inverse squared attenuation follows a slightly different pattern or formula:
Probability of success = k/altitude�
To estimate k, it seems reasonable to use the data from 4000 feet and 8000 feet as benchmarks for the calculation of the constant k (not the same constant as was used in the foregoing analysis, of course.)
At 4000 feet abga the implied k-value if 7,040,000, while at 8000 feet, the implied k-value is 5,760,000. although here again the k-value appears to drop (indicating that the actual attenuation may be worse than inverse squared), we use an average of the two estimates, following our consistent practice of always giving the benefit of the doubt to the cellphones, so to speak.
Taking an average value of k = 6,400,000, we obtain the formula,
Probability of success = 6,400,000/altitude�
Using this formula, we can get a best-case estimate for the probability of cellphone success from a slow-moving light aircraft, as summarized in the following table.
altitude (feet) probability of cellphone call getting through
4,000 0.400
8,000 0.100
12,000 0.040
16,000 0.025
20,000 0.016
24,000 0.011
28,000 0.008
32,000 0.006
Private pilots flying light aircraft are nowadays familiar with the fact that they may use their cellphones to make calls to the ground, at least if they are not higher than one or two thousand feet. Above that altitude, calls get rather iffy, sometimes working, sometimes not. The higher a pilot ascends, the less likely the call is to get through. At 8000 feet the pilot will not get through at all unless he or she happens to be using a cellphone with the same capabilities as C5 (See appendix A.) But even that cellphone begins to fail at 6000 feet.
Calls from 20,000 feet have barely a one-in-a-hundred chance of succeeding.
The results just arrived at apply only to light aircraft and are definitely optimal in the sense that cellphone calls from large, heavy-skinned, fast-moving jetliners are apt to be considerably worse.
Conclusions
It cannot be said that the Faraday attenuation experiment (Part Three) was complete, in the sense that the operator normally held the phone to his ear, seated in a normal position. This meant that the signals from the test phones were only partially attenuated because the operator was surrounded by windows that are themselves radio-transparent.
Although we cannot say yet to what degree the heavier aluminum skin on a Boeing 700-series aircraft would affect cellphone calls made from within the aircraft, they would not be without some effect as windows take up a much smaller solid angle at the cellphone antenna. Signals have a much smaller window area to escape through, in general.
As was shown above, the chance of a typical cellphone call from cruising altitude making it to ground and engaging a cellsite there is less than one in a hundred. To calculate the probability that two such calls will succeed involves elementary probability theory. The resultant probability is the product of the two probabilities, taken separately. In other words, the probability that two callers will succeed is less than one in ten thousand. In the case of a hundred such calls, even if a large majority fail, the chance of, say 13 calls getting through can only be described as infinitesimal. In operational terms, this means "impossible."
At lower altitudes the probability of connection changes from impossible to varying degrees of "unlikely." But here, a different phenomenon asserts itself, a phenomenon that cannot be tested in a propellor-driven light aircraft. At 500 miles per hour, a low-flying aircraft passes over each cell in a very short time. For example if a cell (area serviced by a given cellsite) were a mile in diameter, the aircraft would be in it for one to eight seconds. Before a cellphone call can go through, the device must complete an electronic "handshake" with the cellsite servicing the call. This handshake can hardly be completed in eight seconds. When the aircraft comes into the next cell, the call must be "handed off" to the new cellsite. This process also absorbs seconds of time. Together, the two requirements for a successful and continuous call would appear to absorb too much time for a speaking connection to be established. Sooner or later, the call is "dropped."
This assessment is borne out by both earwitness testimony and by expert opinion, as found in Appendix B, below. Taking the consistency of theoretical prediction and expert opinion at face value, it seems fair to conclude that cellphone calls (at any altitude) from fast-flying aircraft are no more likely to get through than cellphone calls from high-flying slow aircraft.
A. K. Dewdney, <br> April 19th 2003
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