Evaluation of the Use of M2M-Type NB-IoT and LTE Technologies for Maritime Communication Systems

The development of IoT (the Internet of Things) wireless transmission opens a new era in communication systems. In the next years, the development and implementation of IoT systems will be very dynamic. It can be seen that the solutions of LTE – NB-IoT (Long Term Evolution – Narrowband IoT) transmission devices are implemented in a wide range of terrestrial solutions, e.g. smart grids. This paper aims to analyse the possibility of the use of NB-IoT technology for maritime communication applications and partially, for some maritime safety solutions, based on signal coverage analysis at sea. An interesting approach is the comparison of the results of NB-IoT coverage to the classic cellular LTE-based communication systems. Proposed solutions are based on the practical implementation of a designed specialised data concentrator with implemented gateway and radio modems, for both NB-IoT technology as well as LTE. In the paper, analyses of radio link budget and propagation loss models for sea environment are presented. The coverage analysis is based on real measurements of the efficiency of transmissions using wireless modems implemented in the developed data concentrator.