Harnessing low-cost marine Internet for collision avoidance of vessels at sea

Collision of fishing vessels with ships has become one of the major hazards faced by marine fishermen. Due to the lack of a proper communication system, the fishermen at sea do not get any information about the oncoming ships. The ships sometimes fail to detect the vessels, especially at night when the fishermen are asleep with lights off, which increases the chance of collision. The objective of this work is to develop an early warning system for fishing boats at sea to avoid collision with ships. An economical multi-level point to multi-point long-range low-power offshore wide area communication network for boats has been developed by our research center. The network is monitored and managed by an onshore Network Operations Center (NOC). The early warning system obtains the location information of boats from the NOC and that of ships from the Automatic Identification System (AIS). It predicts collisions by tracking the trajectories of boats and ships and alerts the boats in danger so that they will get enough time to move out of the ship's way.