In 2005 over 9.2 million commercial flights were conducted over Europe. Over the next twenty years, forecasts are that this number will increase by a factor of 2.4.

Already, Air Traffic Management (ATM) experiences congestion with respect to important Air Traffic Services (ATS), most notably in the aeronautical VHF frequency band. Radio spectrum is a scarce resource, and so despite possible additional allocations of spectrum for aeronautical communications, the resources at hand should be utilized as efficiently as possible. Hence the need for new communication technologies is clear.

The introduction of new technologies has to adhere to the stringent standards for reliability and safety that is crucial to the commercial aviation industry. Also, new technologies must be non-disruptive and be able to co-exist with legacy systems in existing frequency bands. This makes this important task especially challenging.