A hybrid network for maritime on-board communications

Current maritime on-board communications have to be enhanced for safety and security, where ubiquitous technologies can help, together with providing comfort and convenience to the crew and passengers. Employing wireless sensor networks on board is one recent practice of implementing ubiquitous technology for ships, where further study is needed because of the connectivity challenges. Meanwhile, it is important for an on-board communication system to be reliable and flexible for handling emergency situations. In this paper, we propose a solution of employing ubiquitous technology on ships in a way that both connectivity and emergency handling are examined. Two key aspects of this proposal are: 1) combine different on-board communication networks into a hybrid system, enabling the cooperation between them, 2) smoothly integrate these networks with a consideration of backward compatibility, ease of deployment and connection to shore via Internet. Simulations are used to support our choice between the separate networks and a hybrid one from comparing mainly the communication performance, and a combined integration approach is selected based on comprehensive analysis.