High Bandwidth Maritime Communication Systems – Review of Existing Solutions and New Proposals

This paper presents a review of high bandwidth maritime communication technologies. High bandwidth maritime communication technologies can broadly be divided into two main areas - commercially available systems and research based systems. A detailed review of the current technology in each area is undertaken. Several commercially available systems use satellite communications technologies. A number of these systems are reviewed and bandwidth, latency and cost comparisons are made. Point to point links, another commercially available technology, is also discussed and similar criteria are used for their comparison, including range and bandwidth. As well as commercially available technologies, several novel methods of maritime communications are reviewed that are current research topics in the marine communications field. Many of these show interesting possibilities, such as evaporation ducting and tropospheric scatter. The main mode of operation of each technology is discussed, and the possible performance for each in terms of range and bandwidth is compared. Issues and challenges that need to be overcome for the technologies to be viable in the marine environment are also discussed. The aim of this paper is to provide the reader with a deeper knowledge of what technologies are currently available to facilitate high bandwidth maritime communications, and how they compare under a number of key performance metrics. In addition, an overview of new technologies that are currently under research is provided, and the potential benefits these technologies could bring to maritime communications and the technological issues in doing this is discussed.