Marine Satellite Communications - Maritime SATCOM
Marine satellite communications involve the transmission of data between sea-based entities and land-based facilities using satellites. Maritime SATCOM is crucial for unmanned and autonomous maritime applications, such as remote-controlled ships and underwater drones. These systems rely on satellite links for real-time navigation, environmental monitoring, and operational commands, ensuring that these vessels can operate efficiently and safely in open waters.
Marine satellite communications provide connectivity for platforms such as USVs (unmanned surface vessels) and ASVs (autonomous surface vessels), as well as surfaced UUVs (unmanned underwater vehicles).
Utilizing a variety of different satellite services, these technologies allow vessels to operate beyond the ranges of RF and cellular communications, and may enable them to be controlled and monitored from almost anywhere in the world.
Maritime Satcom Applications
Maritime satellite communications links are used for a range of applications. They can provide remote piloting and tracking of vessels, and provide up-to-the-minute data to autopilots such as weather and AIS (automatic identification system) information. Transmission of status and telemetry data, such as battery and fuel levels and engine data, can be used to monitor the health of the vessel and its subsystems.
Marine satellite internet and SATCOM can also be used to transmit sensor data back to the vessel’s control center. This may include readings from scientific and environmental USVs, and real-time ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) data from naval platforms.
Other industry sectors are also increasingly utilizing SATCOM-controlled uncrewed vessels, including cargo shipping, oil and gas, and commercial fishing. Maritime SATCOM services may offer a range of different options to suit the data requirements of many different applications, ranging from always-on high-data rate broadband, through to short burst data services that transmit minimal status updates at set time intervals.
Marine Satellite Communications Iridium Certus Products
Maritime Satellite Hardware
The hardware powering marine satellite links typically includes a SATCOM terminal, which may incorporate a modem, transceiver and antenna in a complete housed unit. Marine SATCOM terminals are built to withstand water ingress as well as the effects of salt spray. Some systems such as VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) use a separate dish antenna with its own stabilization and satellite tracking mechanisms.
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