Wireless Connectivity in the Coastal Incident Management System

Marine emergency incidents pose major environmental risks that are detrimental to the ocean ecosystem and present significant dangers to both people and property. Current response options are very limited and the existing tools to deal with nearshore environmental spills are neither timely nor efficient. SHIFT Environmental is developing innovative solutions as part of a Coastal Incident Management System (CIMS) to enable local communities such as coastal First Nations to respond quickly and to carry out search and rescue operations. In the CIMS system, there are three main offshore field elements: an unmanned surface vessel (USV), an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and the SHIFT mobile control module. The proposed MITACS project focuses on the wireless connectivity of the three offshore field modules that are critical to the operation of CIMS. The unique air and ocean environment where both the transmitters and receivers are non-stationary and subject to impacts from waves and weather, the lack of pre-existing infrastructures, and the stringent power and payload restrictions make the communications challenging. The network topology, the wireless protocols, the choice of commercial off-the-shelf wireless solutions, the integration of the communications module to the field modular systems will be designed, analyzed, implemented and

Faculty Supervisor:

Xiaodai Dong

Student:

Partner:

Shift Coastal Technologies

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Information and Communications Technology; Environmental Science and Technology; Technology

University:

University of Victoria

Program: