Automatic Virtual Switching of Adaptive Backhaul Equipment for Marine Internet Applications

OceanNet is a project to provide affordable offshore Internet service for marine fishermen during their fishing activities. The communication system onboard the fishing vessel consists of long-range (LR) Wi-Fi based Adaptive Backhaul Equipment (ABE) on the mast and Wi-Fi access point inside the deck. ABE can adapt its role to either client station or mobile base station to provide backhaul and fronthaul connectivity respectively. The directional antenna of the ABE tracks the base station. Fishermen can connect their mobile phones to Internet via the Wi-Fi access point to use social media apps such as WhatsApp, Skype, etc., for offshore communication. The automatic antenna reorientation platform reorients the directional antenna of the ABE towards the base station. The current deployed system has a potential reliability issue due to the moving parts in the reorientation mechanism and the possibility of misalignment of the directional antenna. This paper proposes an alternative solution for the current antenna reorientation system by using six ABEs to provide 360 o coverage. The role of each ABE needs to be switched dynamically to either client or base station or idle. We implemented the automated wireless mode switching of one ABE through python program using a Raspberry Pi board. The detailed implementation process is discussed in the paper.