Design of DPDK-SR-IOV Accelerated OTA Transmission Channel for High-Throughput Airborne Communication Links

Airborne terminals increasingly rely on OTA updates, yet their performance is limited by high satellite-link delays and the overhead of kernel-based packet handling. This study designs a DPDK–SR-IOV transmission path that moves packet processing to user space and assigns fixed queues to OTA traffic. Tests on an airborne terminal and a co-simulation platform show that the new path raises link utilization from 68.4% to 91.7%, reduces median delay by 36.2%, and lowers the 99th-percentile jitter by 47.9%. The retransmission rate stays below 0.4% across 1000 update cycles, indicating stable behavior under long runs. These findings show that kernel-bypass methods, when applied with controlled queue and CPU settings, can support high-throughput and low-jitter OTA updates in aircraft. The study also notes the need for broader testing across different hardware and mixed traffic conditions before deployment at fleet scale.