Kenneth Kagoiya, Bibiye Mahmoud

ABSTRACT

Marine communication network have grown in through put technology applications and media alternatives. The concept of smart ocean has taken root and its development includes interconnection of marine things both on and above surface and underwater. However, there are challenges in seamless marine communications due to the unique marine environment and lack of sufficient network resources to take care of communication requirement (for small and middle scale fishermen in western Indian ocean.

Provision of appropriate network for purpose of security, monitory, navigation, disaster, prevention is necessary. The network will be secure, reliable, sustainable, scalable pervasive and effective for these varied applications. The concept of smart ocean together with application of artificial intelligence enables smart marine sensing, communication and processing. In this paper on network based on maritime wireless mesh network (MWMN) has been conceptualized and requirement for enhanced security, availability and interoperability explored.

This maritime mesh network is to enable accessibility to near shore and regular vessel route areas with enhanced quality and reduce cost with maritime mesh network the vessels are interconnected. The vessel near the shore are connected to LTE of 5G and extend the mesh network. These will give rise to a big web which will make it possible to provide every vessel with reliable high speed interconnection.

In the research the activities involved in the development of the network included, radio channel modelling in sea, ship mobility modelling, analysis of mesh connected network in terms of through put, latency, availability, security, quality of service, routing efficiency and also routing protocol development, implementation , integration and testing. Preliminary results from pilot model indicate the possibility of large-scale deployment of such a network.