Assessing the Range of Radio Maritime Links in Different Waterbodies: Effect of Antenna height and Band Diversities

In this paper, we analyze the weather information for 14 waterbodies from geographical areas with different meteorological characteristics. We estimate the sub-hourly instances of the evaporation duct height (EDH) throughout a period of 10 years. Then, considering the frequency range 1 to 6 GHz, based on the parabolic equation method, we analyze the quality for a presumed shore-to-ship link throughout 100 km range. We evaluate the maximum range that can be supported for different reliability requirements and we focus specifically on analyzing the gain that can be obtained when antenna height and/or band diversity are used. It was found that for high reliability requirements, the antenna height at the shore is the main factor on deciding the maximum communication range that can be maintained. On the other hand, for applications that tolerate delay and work seasonally on an opportunistic basis, the evaporation duct statistics is the main factor deciding the likelihood of increasing the link range and establishing over-the-horizon communications.