Coastal coverage for maritime broadband communications

This document addresses communications to ships in coastal areas. Marine activities within a countries exclusive economic zone (EEZ) have a need for a broadband communications system such as LTE. A concept denoted WiCAN (`Wireless Coastal Area Network') has been developed that utilize base stations at the coast with different mobile communications technologies, and, out of reach of terrestrial systems, switch to SatCom systems. This is facilitated by an “intelligent” router on the ship. Propagation models for land to open sea are presented. These are the Plain Earth Loss model (PEL), the Round Earth Loss model (REL) and an empirical model based on the ITU-R P.1546 recommendation. The models have been compared with measurements made in the Trondheimsfjord covering a distance of 45 km. Further several antenna solution for a ship has been proposed, and the coverage has been calculated for the different solutions.