A Self-Sustaining Maritime Mesh Network

This paper proposes a self-sustaining maritime mesh network. The system consists of two components, energy harvesting buoys, and wireless mesh routers. The radios operate in the white space frequency band. The white space routers were designed and prototyped. A pair of these systems was used in a communication link in the Claytor Lake. An ocean-surface simulator is designed and used to predict the height of the buoys and ocean waves to assist the communication protocol to maintain connectivity. The measurement shows 2 Mbps UDP throughput at a radius of 5 km on the lake.