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Enabling Technologies for 6G Maritime Communications

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 July 2024) | Viewed by 7106

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Interests: maritime communication networks; large-scale distributed antenna systems; coordinated satellite-UAV-terrestrial networks
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Interests: wireless communications; performance analysis; joint radar-communications designs; cognitive radios; wireless relaying; energy harvesting
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Guest Editor
School of Information Science and Technology, Nantong University, Nantong 226019, China
Interests: MIMO/massive MIMO wireless communications; machine learning in communication system
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the coming smart ocean era, reliable and efficient communications are crucial for promoting a variety of maritime activities. Current maritime communication networks (MCNs) mainly rely on marine satellites and on-shore base stations (BSs). The former generally provides a limited transmission rate, while the latter lacks wide-area coverage capability. Due to these facts, the state-of-the-art MCN falls far behind terrestrial fifth-generation (5G) networks. In the upcoming sixth-generation (6G) era, cutting-edge technologies are widely envisioned to fill up the gap and enable intelligent maritime communications.

This Special Issue seeks to bring together the state-of-the-art original research, and the latest advances and innovations in theories, key technologies, and innovative applications of 6G maritime communications. We solicit high-quality original research papers on topics including, but not limited to:

  • Hybrid satellite-terrestrial networks for MCNs;
  • Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled agile MCNs;
  • AI-native network architecture for maritime communications;
  • Integrated sensing and communication for MCNs;
  • MIMO/RIS for enhancing MCNs;
  • Mobile edge computing for MCNs;
  • Measurements and modeling for maritime channels;
  • Hardware testbed or field trial for MCNs.

Prof. Dr. Wei Feng
Dr. Yunfei Chen
Dr. Jue Wang
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 5100 KiB  
Article
A Sliced Parabolic Equation Method to Characterize Maritime Radio Propagation
by Yuzhen Wang, Ting Zhou, Tianheng Xu and Honglin Hu
Sensors 2023, 23(10), 4721; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23104721 - 12 May 2023
Viewed by 1973
Abstract
For maritime broadband communications, atmospheric ducts can enable beyond line-of-sight communications or cause severe interference. Due to the strong spatial–temporal variability of atmospheric conditions in near-shore areas, atmospheric ducts have inherent spatial heterogeneity and suddenness. This paper aims to evaluate the effect of [...] Read more.
For maritime broadband communications, atmospheric ducts can enable beyond line-of-sight communications or cause severe interference. Due to the strong spatial–temporal variability of atmospheric conditions in near-shore areas, atmospheric ducts have inherent spatial heterogeneity and suddenness. This paper aims to evaluate the effect of horizontally inhomogeneous ducts on maritime radio propagation through theoretical analysis and measurement validation. To make better use of meteorological reanalysis data, we design a range-dependent atmospheric duct model. Then, a sliced parabolic equation algorithm is proposed to improve the prediction accuracy of path loss. We derive the corresponding numerical solution and analyze the feasibility of the proposed algorithm under the range-dependent duct conditions. A 3.5 GHz long-distance radio propagation measurement is utilized to verify the algorithm. The spatial distribution characteristics of atmospheric ducts in the measurements are analyzed. Based on actual duct conditions, the simulation results are consistent with the measured path loss. The proposed algorithm outperforms the existing method during the multiple duct periods. We further investigate the influence of different duct horizontal characteristics on the received signal strength. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Enabling Technologies for 6G Maritime Communications)
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10 pages, 1421 KiB  
Article
Adaptive Beam Splitting-Based Broadband Hybrid Precoding for Terahertz Massive MIMO
by Lei Xu, Yu Liu, Jing Chang, Hongyu Fang and Xiaohui Li
Sensors 2023, 23(4), 1968; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23041968 - 9 Feb 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1786
Abstract
Terahertz massive MIMO systems can be used in the local area network (LAN) scene of maritime communication and has great application prospects. To solve the problems of excessive beam training overhead in beam tracking and beam splitting in beam aggregation, a broadband hybrid [...] Read more.
Terahertz massive MIMO systems can be used in the local area network (LAN) scene of maritime communication and has great application prospects. To solve the problems of excessive beam training overhead in beam tracking and beam splitting in beam aggregation, a broadband hybrid precoding (HP) is proposed. First, an additional delayer is introduced between each phase shifter and the corresponding antenna in the classical sub-connected HP structure. Then, by precisely designing the time delay of the delayer and the phase shift of the phase shifter, broadband beams with flexible and controllable coverage can be generated. Finally, the simulation results verify that the proposed HP can achieve fast-tracking and high-energy-efficient communication for multiple mobile users. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Enabling Technologies for 6G Maritime Communications)
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14 pages, 514 KiB  
Article
Altitude Optimization and Task Allocation of UAV-Assisted MEC Communication System
by Shuqi Huang, Jun Zhang and Yi Wu
Sensors 2022, 22(20), 8061; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22208061 - 21 Oct 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2022
Abstract
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used in wireless communication systems due to their flexible mobility and high maneuverability. The combination of UAVs and mobile edge computing (MEC) is regarded as a promising technology to provide high-quality computing services for latency-sensitive applications. In [...] Read more.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used in wireless communication systems due to their flexible mobility and high maneuverability. The combination of UAVs and mobile edge computing (MEC) is regarded as a promising technology to provide high-quality computing services for latency-sensitive applications. In this paper, a novel UAV-assisted MEC uplink maritime communication system is proposed, where an MEC server is equipped on UAV to provide flexible assistance to maritime user. In particular, the task of user can be divided into two parts: one portion is offloaded to UAV and the remaining portion is offloaded to onshore base station for computing. We formulate an optimization problem to minimize the total system latency by designing the optimal flying altitude of UAV and the optimal task allocation ratio. We derive a semi closed-form expression of the optimal flying altitude of UAV and a closed-form expression of the optimal task allocation ratio. Simulation results demonstrate the precision of the theoretical analyses and show some interesting insights. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Enabling Technologies for 6G Maritime Communications)
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