Evaluation of Technology-Supported Distance Measuring to Ensure Safe Aircraft Boarding during COVID-19 Pandemic

Paul Schwarzbach, Julia Engelbrecht, Albrecht Michler, Michael Schultz and Oliver Michler
Additional contact information
Paul Schwarzbach: Institute of Traffic Telematics, Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany
Julia Engelbrecht: Institute of Traffic Telematics, Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany
Albrecht Michler: Institute of Traffic Telematics, Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany
Michael Schultz: Institute of Logistics and Aviation, Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany
Oliver Michler: Institute of Traffic Telematics, Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 20, 1-15

Abstract: With the rise of COVID-19, the sustainability of air transport is a major challenge, as there is limited space in aircraft cabins, resulting in a higher risk of virus transmission. In order to detect possible chains of infection, technology-supported apps are used for social distancing. These COVID-19 applications are based on the display of the received signal strength for distance estimation, which is strongly influenced by the spreading environment due to the signal multipath reception. Therefore, we evaluate the applicability of technology-based social distancing methods in an aircraft cabin environment using a radio propagation simulation based on a three-dimensional aircraft model. We demonstrate the susceptibility to errors of the conventional COVID-19 distance estimation, which can lead to large errors in the determination of distances and to the impracticability of traditional tracing approaches during passenger boarding/deboarding. In the context of the future connected cabin, a robust distance measurement must be implemented to ensure safe travel. Finally, our results can be transferred to similar fields of application, e.g., trains or public transport.

Keywords: social distancing; coronavirus; COVID-19; wireless technologies; ranging; RSSI; BLE; connected cabin; radio propagation simulation; passenger boarding; aircraft cabin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/20/8724/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/20/8724/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:20:p:8724-:d:432249

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().