Broadband Communications for Maritime Users In our daily terrestrial world, advances in information content and delivery systems have profoundly changed our lives. Can you imagine life without email, cell phones, internet access, or high-speed transfer of a large data file? We can’t and those members of our community that spend a considerable amount of their day in a workplace that floats should not have to sacrifice these essentials either. The capability to communicate over broadband networks is becoming more routine, even for maritime users that have to consider ‘affordability’ along with ‘needed capabilities’ to get the job done. Commercial, maritime-based C and Ku band communications technologies provide significant bandwidth cost savings, as an alternative to traditional L-band maritime communications such as Inmarsat. In this article, we will provide an overview of the technologies and costs of broadband maritime commercial communications systems that are available today.
Applications driving Bandwidth Applications that allow for real time data sharing among parties geographically separated have significantly improved the capabilities of many sectors in providing services to its clients. The
by Dr. William J. Barattino Mr. William B. Harrington, Jr. Medical, Government, Military communities, and large System Integrators have embraced use of video teleconferencing and multiparty conference calls with shared whiteboards to reduce travel costs and allow for near-real time decision-making with critical stakeholders 23
simultaneously engaged. The cruise ship industry has also been a driver in the deployment of broadband maritime communications to provide its passengers and crew with a range of services such as wireless internet access from individual laptops, video email, instant messaging, high speed data transfer (up to 2 Mbps), passenger use of existing cell phones while at-sea, and live IP-based video, streaming video, and radio broadcasts. The data servers and support staffs providing these services are typically terrestrially based in order to minimize on-board presence of trained personnel. For many of these communities, broadband communications onto the maritime platform are allowing the expertise and computational support capabilities located in corporate centers to be involved in real time collaborations during maritime operations to avoid costly, after-the-fact corrective actions.
System Description Both commercial C and Ku band systems are routinely used today by maritime users. These satellite links consist of the maritime earth station, the satellite, and the fixed earth station (or another maritime user). The major providers