Dynamic satellite beam switching

Abstract

A dynamic satellite map updating system measures geographic position and travel information of in-flight aircraft in a fleet of aircraft equipped to establish in-flight connectivity services from a plurality of satellite beams. The in-flight aircraft include an on-board satellite map program with satellite map parameters to indicate which satellite beam of a group of available satellite beams is the most desirable based on the in-flight aircraft's geographic location. The system selects in-flight aircraft, determines updated satellite map parameters for the selected aircraft, and transmits the updated satellite map parameters to the aircraft to assemble new satellite map programs to relieve wireless data outage conditions on one or more of the satellite beams. The dynamic satellite updating system may transmit the updated satellite map parameters over an existing satellite data connection to make up-to-date adjustments to the communications load among the group of available satellite beams.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.