Business Challenge
Provide a cost effective, and secure wireless maritime communication link from a terrestrial ground station to a ship at sea at a distance of up to 47km. The wireless link must be able to concurrently support low-latency V.O.I.P., and H.264 real-time video streaming. Various wireless communication networks were evaluated, including satellite, and legacy Ultra-High-Frequency (UHF), and Very-High-Frequency (VHF) systems. Satcom systems were determined not to be viable due to :
- Excessive residual service fee cost, combined with the requirement of high-cost on-board antenna tracking and stabilization equipment.
- The high satellite link latency of > 500 milliseconds does not support the requirements for low latency V.O.I.P. communications.
Alternatively, legacy VHF, and UHF marine communications equipment does not support the data bandwidth requirement of real-time streaming video.
Solution
The customer determined that Doodle Labs cost-effective, long range Smart Radio operating at 4.7GHz was the optimal solution to their requirements. Doodle Labs Smart radio offered features key to project success:
- Unique PRISM frequency shifting technology – providing a low-cost, off the shelf radio operating at 4.7 GHz frequency band.
- Traffic Prioritization – over a single link, the Smart radio provides a separate in-band Ultra Reliable Low Latency Channel (URLCC) which allocates the highest priority, lowest latency data transmission cue for latency sensitive V.O.I.P., along with a second dedicated in-band channel for real-time streaming video traffic
- Secured Communications – AES 256-bit encryption, preventing the interception of the wireless data communication, thereby, ensuring the confidentiality of the data transmission.
Key factors in the selection of the 4.7GHz frequency band for this project:
- Ability to meet the RF Fresnel Zone requirements for a ship to shore link distance of up to 47km, with the available antenna mounting structures (See Figure Below)