Optimising file delivery in a maritime environment through inter-vessel connectivity predictions

It is well known that the Internet infrastructure is experiencing an ever growing demand for large file/data transfers. To date, Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) seems as the only economically viable over-the-sea communications paradigm to support bulk data transfers between seagoing vessels and the fixed Internet. In this work, we construct an architectural prototype of this DTN overlay to connect sailing vessels to the fixed Internet infrastructure. The proposed architecture integrates elements of the existing vessel Automatic Identification System (AIS) to fetch and manipulate mobility and trip related data of every vessel that could come into close contact (at any future instance in time) with a destination node and therefore assist in message forwarding. Considering both current and future contact opportunities all within the same optimization strategy allows for the maximization of routing performance. Ultimately, it is shown that the proposed architecture allows for computationally efficient routing solutions to be generated with variable optimization objectives. As an initial assessment of the performance of the routing functions of this architecture we illustrate the optimal minimum delay routing paths that deliver messages from an arbitrary infrastructure node to a target destination mobile host.