HYBRID COMMUNICATION NETWORK FOR THE PURPOSE OF MARITIME APPLICA TIONS

Abstract

The article presents the concept of the hybrid communication system for the purpose of maritime applications. The main idea of this system is that it will utilize the seamless roaming concept, which means the communication link at sea will be established automatically (and seamlessly for the user), using many possible communication techniques (cellular, LTE, Wi-Fi, VDES, etc.) which will be selected depending on the current conditions of the radio channel and the requirements and preferences of the user. The paper will introduce the general architecture of the system, the concept of the maritime cloud and the seamless roaming, including the way the latter will be implemented in the system. The authors will also briefly introduce the proposed test-bed of the system’s on-board device. The system presented in the article is one of the major topics of the EfficienSea 2 project (co-funded from the ‘Horizon 2020’ programme) in which the authors of the paper participate.