Maritime Communications: A Survey on Enabling Technologies, Opportunities, and Challenges

Abstract

Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface, where the steady increase in oceanic activities has promoted the need for reliable maritime communication technologies. The existing maritime communication systems involve terrestrial, aerial, and space networks. This paper presents a holistic overview of the different forms of maritime communications and provides the latest advances in various marine technologies. The paper first introduces the different techniques used for maritime communications over the radio frequency (RF) and optical bands. Then, we present the channel models for RF and optical bands, modulation and coding schemes, coverage and capacity, and radio resource management in maritime communications. After that, the paper presents some emerging use cases of maritime networks, such as the Internet of Ships and the ship-to-underwater Internet of things. Finally, we highlight a few exciting open challenges and identify a set of future research directions for maritime communication, including bringing broadband connectivity to the deep sea, using terahertz and visible light signals for on-board applications, and data-driven modeling for radio and optical marine propagation.

A Survey on UAV-Aided Maritime Communications: Deployment Considerations, Applications, and Future Challenges

“…Such an ecosystem relies on a heterogeneous mix of vessels, buoys, platforms, unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), sensors, and actuators [8]. In addition, maritime services are characterized by varying QoS types, since, for example, crew and passengers on-board cruise ships might be interested in broadband connectivity, SAR operations entail the transmission of real-time video, while IoT services in smart maritime environments and intelligent transportation systems are based on Ultra-reliable and ultra-low latency (URLLC) [13], [14].…”

“…Wei et al [15] A survey on hybrid satellite-terrestrial networks for maritime IoT applications -Maritime communications challenges, related to meteorological and geographical characteristics and heterogeneous service requirements are discussed -Hybrid-satellite terrestrial technologies for high transmission efficiency, wide network coverage, and maritime-specific services are discussed -Very few works related to UAV-aided maritime communications are included Jahanbakht et al [10] A survey on the synergy among the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) and big marine data analytics -A thorough overview of IoUT network architectures, communication techniques and state-of-the-art research challenges is presented -The role of big data analytics and machine learning for IoUT applications is given and relevant frameworks and platforms are discussed -UAV-based solutions and related aspects are missing from the survey and the focus is on underwater communications and applications Alqurashi et al [13] A survey on enabling technologies, opportunities, and challenges of maritime communications -Focus on physical-layer techniques, channel modelling and RRM for maritime communications -Presentation of emerging MCN use cases and open challenges related to THz and visible light communications and data-driven optimization -Very few works on UAV-aided maritime communications are included This survey A survey emphasizing on the integration of UAVs for supporting the operation of maritime communication networks -UAV-aided maritime network architectures and the role of the heterogeneous network nodes are presented -Depending on the network layer that the communication techniques operate, UAV-aided MCN solutions are categorized and critically evaluated -UAV-aided maritime communications open issues, ranging from the physicallayer up to cloud/edge architectures and ML integration are discussed lite constellations. Unfortunately, such maritime networking architectures are not capable of supporting the increasing number of vessels, USVs, UUVs, sensors and emerging maritime applications, due to low data rates, insufficient spectrum, high communication delays, and unreliable connectivity.…”

“…In recent years, the interest in maritime activities has increased and currently deployed communication infrastructure cannot cope with the requirements of emerging use cases [13], [15]. In this context, UAV-aided solutions represent a radical paradigm shift that complements terrestrial and satellite segments, bringing several unique advantages in terms of deployment flexibility, as well as path-loss and delay reduction.…”

Energy Consumption Minimization of Air to Water Visible Light Communications

“…Owing to growing underwater activities, e.g., undersea oil & gas exploration, and the Internet of underwater things (IoUT) [1], which are expected to connect the outside world to various underwater nodes, sensors and autonomous underwater vehicles, energy-efficient air-to-water wireless communications are urgently needed by the industry, military, and scientific communities. However, air-to-water communication has always been a challenge.…”

Outage Probability Analysis of Maritime FSO Links

“…The trend is heading towards the wireless communication systems in which acoustic and radio frequency (RF) based communication systems are replaced by their optical spectrum based counterparts. The evolution of maritime communication systems, marine technologies, various applications and their integrations, autonomous networks, implementation challenges have been comprehensively evaluated in [1], [2], [3]. The performance of a maritime communication network capable of wideband video communication was analyzed considering energy efficiency [4].…”