How do you simulate a full airliner cabin to test wireless signals? If you're Boeing, with potatoes.

In a news release Wednesday, Boeing touted its new "advanced method to test wireless signals in airplane cabins," saying:

Boeing engineers created a new process for measuring radio signal quality using proprietary measurement technology and analysis tools. This enables engineers to more efficiently measure how strong a signal is and how far it spreads, ensuring safe yet powerful signal penetration throughout an airplane cabin.

Once the new method was established, testing that previously took more than two weeks to conduct was reduced to 10 hours.

Boeing didn't say much about the technical aspects of its test process, other than that it "takes advantage of state-of-the-art technology and ground-breaking statistical analysis to identify strong and weak signal areas and balance them by adjusting the connectivity system accordingly."

Boeing conducted a series of tests using the process on a decommissioned airplane. That's where the potatoes came in.

"The team determined that potatoes were ideal stand-ins for passengers, given their similar physical interactions with electronic signal properties," Boeing wrote in a news release. "Much of the testing was conducted on the grounded airplane with the seats filled with 20,000 pounds of potato sacks. The test data was then validated on the ground with human stand-ins for passengers."

This, of course, gives new meaning to the term "veg out."
