  A hybrid-duplex aeronautical communication system (HBD-ACS) consisting of a
full-duplex (FD) enabled ground station (GS), and two half-duplex (HD)
air-stations (ASs) is proposed as a direct solution to the spectrum crunch
faced by the aviation industry. Closed-form outage probability and finite
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) diversity gain expressions in aeronautical
communications over Rician fading channels are derived for a successive
interference cancellation (SIC) detector. Similar expressions are also
presented for an interference ignorant (II) detector and HD-equivalent modes at
GS and ASs. Through outage and finite SNR diversity gain analysis conducted at
the nodes, and system level, residual SI and inter-AS interference are found to
be the primary limiting factors in the proposed HBD-ACS. Additional analysis
also revealed that the II and SIC detectors in the proposed HBD-ACS are
suitable for weak and strong interference scenarios, respectively. When
compared to HD-ACS, the proposed HBD-ACS achieves lower outage probability and
higher diversity gains at higher multiplexing gains when operating at low SNRs.
Finite SNR analysis also showed the possibility of the proposed HBD-ACS being
able to attain interference-free diversity gains through proper management of
residual SI. Hence, the proposed HBD-ACS is more reliable and can provide
better throughput compared to existing HD-ACS at low-to-moderate SNRs.
