A Cost-Effective Ship Safety Data Transfer in Coastal Areas

Abstract

Recent advances in information and communications technology (ICT) have improved ship safety management. Ships can be monitored and controlled remotely using ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communications technologies. These methods entail the sharing of vessel status information to prevent ship-related accidents and increase safety. In coastal areas, most ships transmit and receive data via wireless communications networks based on radio frequency (RF), long-term evolution (LTE), satellite, and other technologies. RF-based and LTE-based networks can be utilized when the communications are within the range of dozens of kilometers. On the other hand, satellite-based networks cover the entire ocean, but the associated costs are very expensive. In this study, we propose a cost-effective ship data transfer scheme to guarantee reliable data transfer but also optimize communication costs via adaptive network selection. In the proposed scheme, RF-based and LTE-based networks are selected as the default modes to reduce costs. However, when a ship enters a radio shadow, it temporarily switches to satellite-based mode to guarantee data reliability. Therefore, it rarely transmits data over the satellite-based network, saving on communications costs. In an emergency, the data can be transmitted frequently without regard to costs to improve safety performance. To validate the performance of the proposed scheme, we performed several evaluations using the ns2 simulator. The results indicated that the proposed scheme guarantees reliable data transfer while also reducing communications costs.