Broadband communication solutions for maritime ITSs: Wider and faster deployment of new e-navigation services

In its initial part, the paper presents an overview of popular technologies and systems currently developed or employed in maritime communication. These solutions are used to provide both ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communication for the purpose of supporting specific services, often dedicated to maritime safety and e-navigation. Utility of such communication systems have been thoroughly verified over the years and their strengths and limitations are also widely known. The later include relatively low maximum throughput and/or high cost of both deployment and operation, caused by the requirement of long communication range and high reliability in difficult propagation conditions. Based on the above overview, the subsequent part of the paper presents preliminary results of research conducted at the Computer Communications Department, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics, Gdansk University of Technology within the netBaltic project. The project's objective is to create a maritime communication system, able to transparently utilize various transmission technologies to form a multihop network structure and thus provide maritime vessels with Internet Protocol-based communication capabilities in diverse set of conditions and areas. For this purpose a combination of mobility management, mesh and delay tolerant network mechanisms is employed, allowing deployment of a wide range of user-level services, starting with general purpose Internet access, through navigation/weather charts distribution and ending with varied e-navigation functionalities.