Designing Laboratory for IoT Communication Infrastructure Environment for Remote Maritime Surveillance in Equatorial Areas Based on the Gulf of Guinea Field Experiences

Abstract

The steady increase of the world population and economy leads to an increase in both types and amounts of goods transported over seas, which further inevitably leads to an increase of criminal activities in the maritime arena. In order to stifle criminal activities nations are forced to develop sophisticated sensor networks. The backbone of any sensor network is a communication network which connects all sensors with the command centers, most often located hundreds of kilometers away from the sensors. In developing countries, communication networks are very often poorly developed, leaving only satellite links as somewhat reliable means of communication. Henceforth, in this paper, a laboratory for the Internet of Things (IoT) communication infrastructure environment designed to facilitate maritime sensor network design process in areas where communication network is dependent on data transfer over satellite links is presented. In order to successfully describe and develop a laboratory for IoT communication infrastructure environment, necessary data are collected during the design and deployment of a maritime surveillance network in the Gulf of Guinea. The main advantage of the proposed laboratory environment is the inclusion of satellite link simulation in the IoT laboratory environment. This feature provides an opportunity to cover a much broader scope of IoT solutions compared to other IoT laboratories.2 of 20 fishing [5]. More importantly, overly excessive fishing can lead to the complete depletion of biological resources and thus endanger the marine ecosystem to the point of no return [6]. On the other hand, according to [7], maritime piracy is becoming quite common in some regions of the world. Attacks are mostly performed in order to hijack a vessel and request a ransom for crew and vessel itself or to steal valuable cargo such as crude oil. Regardless of the final goal of the pirate attack, it is clear pirate attacks must be stopped. The very same is true for illegal fishing, which is probably even more important, since permanently damaging oceans ecosystems will definitely endanger a human survival on this planet.In order to provide a safer maritime environment, firstly a sensor network for continuous monitoring of maritime activities in territorial sea and EEZ must be established. On the other hand, since EEZs are huge bodies of water that can cover hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, complete monitoring is much easier said than done. To the best of our knowledge, there are only two ways to achieve complete EEZ monitoring. The first approach utilizes optical and microwave sensors on platforms such as satellites and airplanes, thus avoiding the limitations of the sensors, but this introduces limitations in the platform. The most limiting factor is the interrupted data availability, since no airplane is able to stay in the air constantly during the whole year and during all weather conditions. Meanwhile, satellites, which are orbiting around the Earth, are over the zone of interest for a limited tim...

IoT OTH Maritime Surveillance Service over Satellite Network in Equatorial Environment: Analysis, Design and Deployment

“…In our previous work [24] we have demonstrated the Laboratory for IoT communication infrastructure environment for remote maritime surveillance, which simulates effects of the satellite link as a part of IoT communication layer. In this paper, we will demonstrate the complete IoT environment built around HFSWRs as primary sensors in equatorial area, which uses satellite communication as a feasible communication solution.…”