Intelligent Maritime Wireless Sensing for Smart Vessels: Perspective, Architecture, and Challenges

Amid growing maritime safety concerns arising from complex navigation environments and human factors, the shipping industry urgently demands transformative sensing solutions. Intelligent wireless sensing emerges as a transformative paradigm, that can overcome the limitations of conventional sensing systems. It enables critical functionalities for next generation smart vessels, such as crew localization, crew physical and mental state monitoring, equipment monitoring, and environmental awareness, which can significantly improve maritime safety. This article first provides a macro perspective on smart vessels empowered by intelligent wireless sensing and categorizes their potential applications. We then outline a general sensing system architecture suitable for smart vessels, comprising sensing signal observation, enhancement, and interpretation modules. Case studies are conducted aboard the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">XinHongzhuan</i> research and training vessel of Dalian Maritime University, which are shown to achieve reliable sensing performance for vital signs monitoring and real-time crew localization. Finally, this article discusses prevailing challenges and outlines promising future research directions.