MagicNet: The Maritime Giant Cellular Network

Recently, the development of marine industries has increasingly attracted attention from all over the world. A wide-area and seamless maritime communication network has become a critical supporting approach. In this article, we propose a novel architecture named the maritime giant cellular network (MagicNet) relying on seaborne floating towers deployed in a honeycomb topology. The tower-borne giant-cell base stations are capable of providing wide-area seamless coverage for maritime users and can construct multihop line-of-sight (LoS) links connecting to terrestrial networks. Then the MagicNet-aided maritime network architecture is expounded in terms of five dimensions (i.e., space, air, shore, surface, and underwater), which is compatible with existing systems including maritime satellite networks and maritime Internet of Things, and supports a range of compelling industrial applications. Moreover, we introduce a joint multicast beamforming and relay system for the sake of supporting high-speed and low-cost information services for near-shore areas, as well as a three-tier space-air-surface hybrid network in order to provide reliable wide-area communications for deep offshore areas. Finally, we discuss the open issues and future works on MagicNet.