In recent years, we have been witnessing a growing interest in the subject of communication at sea. One of the promising solutions to enable widespread access to data transmission capabilities in coastal waters is the possibility of employing an on-shore wireless access infrastructure. However, such an infrastructure is a heterogeneous one, managed by many independent operators and utilizing a number of different communication...

The development of broadband network access technologies available to users on land has triggered a rapid expansion of a diverse range of services provided by terrestrial networks. However, due to limitations of digital communication technologies in the off-shore area, the maritime ICT systems evolution so far has not followed that trend. Despite the e-navigation initiative defining the set of Maritime Services, the progress in...

The Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) systems belong to the fundamental tools used in ensuring a high level of safety across sea basins with heavy traffic, where the presence of navigational hazards poses a great risk of collision or a ship running aground. In order to determine the mutual location of ships, VTS systems obtain information from different facilities, such as coastal radar stations, AIS, and vision systems. Fixing a ship’s...

The article presents the watercraft recognition and identification system as an extension for the presently used visual water area monitoring systems, such as VTS (Vessel Traffic Service) or RIS (River Information Service). The watercraft identification systems (AIS - Automatic Identification Systems) which are presently used in both sea and inland navigation require purchase and installation of relatively expensive transceivers...