Improving Last-Mile Maritime Communication Using Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces

Near-shore ship communication is vital to maritime operations, serving as the last-mile communication link between vessels and shore-based infrastructure. Despite its importance, this environment poses pressing challenges. The high density of ships, towering vessels, shore-based buildings, and natural obstacles like mountains obstruct communication paths, leading to degraded signal quality and reliability. Moreover, sea surface reflections and other obstructions create a complex propagation environment, often resulting in composite fading channels. These channels are modeled as a mixture of Nakagami-m multipath fading and log-normal shadowing, capturing both small-scale and large-scale fading effects. If these challenges are not adequately addressed, they can severely compromise the safety and efficiency of maritime operations. To address these issues, we propose to use Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRS) to enhance last-mile communications in the maritime domain. IRS can dynamically manipulate electromagnetic waves to optimize signal propagation and improve communication performance. By smartly adjusting the phase shifts of IRS elements, our approach aims to enhance signal strength, extend coverage, and mitigate both composite fading effects. Our results demonstrate that the IRS-aided system can effectively outperform the traditional relaying systems by 6bps/Hz. Implementing IRS in near-shore communication networks further enhances maritime operations, providing more resilient and efficient communication channels.