Resilient and High -Performance Multi-Medium Multi-Channel Wireless Long-Range Mesh Network for Offshore Automated and Remote Communication

Abstract High-speed Internet has been a very challenging implementation for offshore automated applications and remote communication to reduce operating costs significantly. The satellite network is commonly used in offshore operations, but its high latency and low reliability can be unsuitable for mission-critical operations. Another network medium, like digital microwave radio (DMR), is also commonly used in offshore operations to provide communication networks to multiple remote locations using a mesh configuration to extend the network range up to thirty kilometres. DMR has physical limitations, such as limited antenna height that limits line-of-sight wireless transmission range, regulated maximum bandwidth, and spectrum utilisation. However, decreasing the transmission bandwidth can increase the DMR transmission range, resulting in lower data speed. Overcoming the constraints of DMR as the wireless network solution for offshore, a multi-channel DMR configuration can be implemented to compensate for the lower data speed when transmission bandwidth is reduced. Many solutions in the market provide built-in aggregated data transmission using multi-channel DMR systems, but the solutions are restricted with small spectrum utilisation and high degradation of aggregated data transmission when hopping over multiple network nodes. A non-aggregated multi-channel data transmission method is an approach to mitigate such limitations. It is a cost-effective solution for multi-channel DMR systems. It can be agnostic and is independent of any wireless medium and type that can be used as a network channel and combined into a multi-channel wireless network system. The non-aggregated multi-channel data transmission controls the appropriate amount of data packets and the right time to transmit the data packets over all channels. The parallel data transmission is seemingly concurrent at microsecond time. The solution can improve network performance, reliability, and latency during severe weather conditions due to long-range and multiple network hops with parallel transmission paths. The solution has been implemented and used successfully at numerous offshore sites in the South China Sea using multi-medium and multi-channel wireless with significant performance results.