A broadband ship-to-shore communications network for the Naval Oceanographic Office

The Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) conducts multimission, worldwide ocean surveys to provide specialized products and services for warfighters and civilians, national and international customers. A high-speed ship-to-shore data communications network is required to move the huge volume of survey data collected aboard T-AGS 60 USNS PATHFINDER class survey ships to the NAVOCEANO Survey Operations Center (SOC) at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. The rapid growth in broadband terrestrial communications networks, driven primarily by the Internet, is now migrating to ships at sea. Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) satellite communications (SATCOM) terminals for shipboard installation are available that provide T1 and higher data rates. Due to recent reductions in satellite transponder costs, the military has increased its utilization of commercial satellite resources to improve timeliness of data product delivery and wide-area network services to customers. This paper describes a highspeed asymmetrical (2048 Kbps from ships; 384 Kbps to ships) communications network using C-Band commercial geostationary satellites to provide real-time voice, video, and data connectivity between a fleet of survey ships and the NAVOCEANO SOC.