Mesh-based internet on the Baltic sea for improving e-navigation services. A case study

The nascent of e-navigation brought to light new challenges into the maritime world. One of them is assuring safe and reliable communication in remote locations (e.g. seas and oceans) to fully utilize benefits offered by innovative e-navigation solutions. The netBaltic project, proposed a new approach to communication based on self-organizing heterogeneous mesh network. Additionally, based on test-bed results, the project outlines new challenges for three selected e-navigation services such as Electronic Nautical Chart, numerical weather forecast and weather routing such as preparing and distributing chart updates packages in a timely manner, generating and delivering weather forecasts based on area-specific conditions in a highly compressed format and developing inter-vessel data transmission protocol.