The Iris system is mainly composed of Viasat geostationary satellite constellation and supporting ground stations and networks, providing global coverage and higher data rate L-band communication to aircraft.
The Iris System architecture is depicted in the following diagram:
The Iris System comprises three main segments:
- Air-Ground segment: From the Aircraft boundary (i.e. AES which is out of the scope of the ISP service) down to the Viasat air-ground network which interfaces with the G/G segment through Meet Me Points (MMPs), and vice versa.
- Ground-Ground segment: with the following alternative options:
- Option 1 – connection via SITA ATN G/G routers operated by SITA which route the CLNP (Connection-Less Network Protocol which supports ATN/OSI service) traffic all the way through to the ANSP ground network.
- Option 2 – direct connection to Inmarsat ATN A/G router using NewPENS as the underlying IP connection to convey the traffic all the way through to ANSP ground network.
NOTE 1: Option 1 is available from the Iris Service first declaration date. And option 2 will be activated upon ANSP user request and after the required end-to-end validation is successfully completed.
- ISP service segment: providing the supporting service to ensure compliance with the service specifications provided in the Iris SDD.