The engineering vision of relying on the ``smart sky" for supporting air
traffic and the ``Internet above the clouds" for in-flight entertainment has
become imperative for the future aircraft industry. Aeronautical ad hoc
Networking (AANET) constitutes a compelling concept for providing broadband
communications above clouds by extending the coverage of Air-to-Ground (A2G)
networks to oceanic and remote airspace via autonomous and self-configured
wireless networking amongst commercial passenger airplanes. The AANET concept
may be viewed as a new member of the family of Mobile ad hoc Networks (MANETs)
in action above the clouds. However, AANETs have more dynamic topologies,
larger and more variable geographical network size, stricter security
requirements and more hostile transmission conditions. These specific
characteristics lead to more grave challenges in aircraft mobility modeling,
aeronautical channel modeling and interference mitigation as well as in network
scheduling and routing. This paper provides an overview of AANET solutions by
characterizing the associated scenarios, requirements and challenges.
Explicitly, the research addressing the key techniques of AANETs, such as their
mobility models, network scheduling and routing, security and interference are
reviewed. Furthermore, we also identify the remaining challenges associated
with developing AANETs and present their prospective solutions as well as open
issues. The design framework of AANETs and the key technical issues are
investigated along with some recent research results. Furthermore, a range of
performance metrics optimized in designing AANETs and a number of
representative multi-objective optimization algorithms are outlined.

本篇论文概述了在机载通信领域中，利用航空自组网提供广域网通信的方法和技术，介绍了这种新型航空自组网的关键技术，包括移动模型、网络调度和路由、安全和干扰等，并指出了仍需要解决的问题和展望。