Multi-hop Wireless Transmission for Maritime Scenarios

The collection and processing of maritime information is an essential task that demands extensive analysis to achieve a more profound understanding of coastal regions. Usually, data is gathered through sensors placed on buoys and transmitted to onshore data centres for storage and examination. Nevertheless, the harsh marine environment, including waves, wind, and vessel traffic, creates substantial challenges for effectively managing this task. This paper focuses on two key objectives: firstly, introducing a physical model for electromagnetic propagation in a buoy network that takes into account the unique characteristics of the marine environment, and secondly, evaluating the performance of the physical model in a multi-hop data transmission scenario using a LoRaWAN mesh network. The main aim of the proposed approach is to facilitate efficient communication while optimising the utilisation of reconfigurable devices to reduce power consumption and accelerate data transmission. To gauge the effectiveness of the proposed solution, we explored a multi-hop approach centred on a single relay node that receives packets from other nodes and forwards them to the gateway. We analyse two quality-of-service parameters: throughput and packet losses. Our proposed solution indicates that employing a straightforward one-hop relay can enhance throughput up to three times during the transmission process.