  We propose a regularized zero-forcing transmit precoding (RZF-TPC) aided and
distance-based adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) scheme to support
aeronautical communication applications, by exploiting the high spectral
efficiency of large-scale antenna arrays and link adaption. Our RZF-TPC aided
and distance-based ACM scheme switches its mode according to the distance
between the communicating aircraft. We derive the closed-form asymptotic
signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) expression of the RZF-TPC for
the aeronautical channel, which is Rician, relying on a non-centered channel
matrix that is dominated by the deterministic line-of-sight component. The
effects of both realistic channel estimation errors and of the co-channel
interference are considered in the derivation of this approximate closed-form
SINR formula. Furthermore, we derive the analytical expression of the optimal
regularization parameter that minimizes the mean square detection error. The
achievable throughput expression based on our asymptotic approximate SINR
formula is then utilized as the design metric for the proposed RZF-TPC aided
and distance-based ACM scheme. Monte-Carlo simulation results are presented for
validating our theoretical analysis as well as for investigating the impact of
the key system parameters. The simulation results closely match the theoretical
results. In the specific example that two communicating aircraft fly at a
typical cruising speed of 920 km/h, heading in opposite direction over the
distance up to 740 km taking a period of about 24 minutes, the RZF-TPC aided
and distance-based ACM is capable of transmitting a total of 77 Gigabyte of
data with the aid of 64 transmit antennas and 4 receive antennas, which is
significantly higher than that of our previous eigen-beamforming transmit
precoding aided and distance-based ACM benchmark.
