Tethered Balloons and TV White Spaces: A Solution for Real-time Marine Data Transfer at Remote Ocean Areas

Abstract

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and Remotely Operated Vehicles are useful in industries such as offshore Oil and Gas, deep sea mining, and aquaculture, where inspection missions are frequent. While underwater communications are mainly done using acoustic links, retrieving data from these devices to shore is still an open issue, especially when we consider the high cost of satellite communications. In this paper, using ns-3 simulations, we evaluate the ability of the communications solution being developed in the BLUECOM+ project to enable real-time marine data transfer at remote ocean areas. Through the usage of tethered balloons, TV white spaces frequencies, and multi-hop communications, the BLUECOM+ solution enables cost-effective, broadband connectivity to the Internet at remote ocean areas, using standard access technologies such as GPRS/UMTS/LTE and Wi-Fi. Simulation results show an expected range exceeding 100 km from shore using only two nodes at sea, with bitrates over 1 Mbit/s.