Tanker Vessel Inner Spaces WLAN Development and Quality of Experience Study for Video Streaming

Abstract

This paper studies the establishment of a reliable communication link between the below deck spaces of an ocean going tanker vessel and the managing office ashore suitable to support an Augmented Reality based Remote Assistance Platform (AR-RAP). Results are presented regarding a WLAN implementation for the below deck spaces along with the Quality of Experience (QoE) of video streaming tests with the headquarters. The implemented WLAN uses IEEE 802.11 n, ac protocols, and utilizes MIMO $3 \times 2$ Transmit Beamforming $( \mathrm {T}\times $ BF) and $2 \times 3$ Spatial Division Multiplexing (SDM) through the respective MIMO Access Points (APs). As results indicate, the proposed architecture has proven to be robust and without signal fluctuation, despite the high reverberant environment of the vessel's engine room. The bottleneck of the communication link proved to be the Satellite link, due to the limited available bandwidth and the high inherent latency.