Design of Marine Broadband Framework for coastal fishing and its applications

In this paper, we report on an evaluation of the Marine Broadband Framework that was implemented in 2008, as well as a real-time aquatic resources evaluation system that uses the Marine Broadband Framework. The Marine Broadband Framework is a wireless LAN environment with xDSL equivalent transmission speeds that can be used over a range of approximately 20 km from the coastline, which is the main operating environment for small fishing vessels. As a result of the progress in semiconductor technology in recent years, the nautical instruments and operational measurement devices installed on small fishing vessels now have advanced features and high precision. However, there are no means to proactively share and reuse the information acquired by these devices, primarily because a network environment that can be easily used in costal sea areas is not available. To address this issue, we constructed a wireless LAN environment using an IEEE 802. llj specification wireless LAN system that can be used from small fishing vessels in coastal sea areas to freely access the Internet. We evaluated the proposed Marine Broadband Framework by constructing a network of sensors that automatically measure the signal strength and actual throughput of the wireless LAN. As a result, we confirmed a stable throughput of more than 10 Mbps within a range of 3 km, and more than 8 Mbps within a range of 5 km. Moreover, we confirmed that by using the Marine Broadband Framework, images from the fish-finder installed on small fishing vessels could be transmitted in real time. In 2009, we installed mobile terminals on small fishing vessels for inputting operational records, and we are currently working to develop a real-time aquatic resources evaluation system that collects operational records along with positioning information from the GPS.