{"title":"Maritime monitoring through LoRaWAN: Resilient decentralised mesh networks for enhanced data transmission","authors":"Salah Eddine Elgharbi , Mauricio Iturralde , Yohan Dupuis , Alain Gaugue","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2025.108276","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Resilient communication networks from ocean-deployed buoys are crucial for maritime applications. However, wireless data transmission in these environments faces significant challenges due to limited buoy battery capacity, harsh weather conditions, and potential interference from maritime vessels. LoRaWAN technology, known for its low power consumption and long-range communication capabilities, presents a promising solution. Nevertheless, the standard LoRaWAN framework lacks native support for multi-hop routing, which is essential for enhancing network efficiency by relaying data between buoys. This paper introduces two novel multi-hop routing protocols designed for resilient LoRaWAN mesh networks in maritime environments. The first, Opportunistic Smart Routing over a Decentralised LoRaWAN Mesh (OSR-DLM), employs a cross-layer design with a hybrid routing strategy and balanced metric selection. The second, Beacon-Forwarding LoRaWAN with Channel-Aware Path Selection (BF-LoRaCAPS), maintains continuous device awareness using a scheduling mechanism and integrates the OSR-DLM strategy for further optimisation. We evaluate these protocols through extensive simulations that model the detrimental effects of severe weather on data transmission, validated by analysing varied parameter settings in massive Maritime of Things (MoT) scenarios. Key performance metrics, including packet delivery ratio, end-to-end latency, throughput, and traffic intensity for each hop-ratio, are analysed. The results show the superiority of both OSR-DLM and BF-LoRaCAPS over conventional Geographic Routing Protocol (GRP) variants under realistic marine channel conditions. Notably, BF-LoRaCAPS exhibits superior network coverage and resilience, outperforming both OSR-DLM and GRP variants, albeit with slightly increased latency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 108276"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3000,"publicationDate":"2025-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Computer Communications","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140366425002336","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Resilient communication networks from ocean-deployed buoys are crucial for maritime applications. However, wireless data transmission in these environments faces significant challenges due to limited buoy battery capacity, harsh weather conditions, and potential interference from maritime vessels. LoRaWAN technology, known for its low power consumption and long-range communication capabilities, presents a promising solution. Nevertheless, the standard LoRaWAN framework lacks native support for multi-hop routing, which is essential for enhancing network efficiency by relaying data between buoys. This paper introduces two novel multi-hop routing protocols designed for resilient LoRaWAN mesh networks in maritime environments. The first, Opportunistic Smart Routing over a Decentralised LoRaWAN Mesh (OSR-DLM), employs a cross-layer design with a hybrid routing strategy and balanced metric selection. The second, Beacon-Forwarding LoRaWAN with Channel-Aware Path Selection (BF-LoRaCAPS), maintains continuous device awareness using a scheduling mechanism and integrates the OSR-DLM strategy for further optimisation. We evaluate these protocols through extensive simulations that model the detrimental effects of severe weather on data transmission, validated by analysing varied parameter settings in massive Maritime of Things (MoT) scenarios. Key performance metrics, including packet delivery ratio, end-to-end latency, throughput, and traffic intensity for each hop-ratio, are analysed. The results show the superiority of both OSR-DLM and BF-LoRaCAPS over conventional Geographic Routing Protocol (GRP) variants under realistic marine channel conditions. Notably, BF-LoRaCAPS exhibits superior network coverage and resilience, outperforming both OSR-DLM and GRP variants, albeit with slightly increased latency.
期刊介绍:
Computer and Communications networks are key infrastructures of the information society with high socio-economic value as they contribute to the correct operations of many critical services (from healthcare to finance and transportation). Internet is the core of today''s computer-communication infrastructures. This has transformed the Internet, from a robust network for data transfer between computers, to a global, content-rich, communication and information system where contents are increasingly generated by the users, and distributed according to human social relations. Next-generation network technologies, architectures and protocols are therefore required to overcome the limitations of the legacy Internet and add new capabilities and services. The future Internet should be ubiquitous, secure, resilient, and closer to human communication paradigms.
Computer Communications is a peer-reviewed international journal that publishes high-quality scientific articles (both theory and practice) and survey papers covering all aspects of future computer communication networks (on all layers, except the physical layer), with a special attention to the evolution of the Internet architecture, protocols, services, and applications.