Designing High-Speed Directional Communication Capabilities for Unmanned Surface Vehicles

Machine-Type Communications (MTC) is one of the important use cases of fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks. The ability of networked devices to communicate with each other in a fully automated manner without human interaction is an emerging area wherein both academia and industry are putting significant efforts. One of the aspects of MTC that has been studied in this paper is focused on enabling high-speed long-range communication specifically used in autonomous robotic off-shore operations. For this purpose, a system comprising 3GPP LTE and directional IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) radio links was designed, installed, and tested on an unmanned surface vehicle to enable high-speed bi-directional connectivity.