# Experimental Evaluation of an IoT-Based Platform for Maritime Transport Services
## 1 Introduction  
In the globalization era, maritime transportation has assumed global dimensions, thereby gaining strategic importance. The shipping of goods has become worldwide along with supply chains and the volume of freight, which have become increasingly high. In this context, and because of an increasing growth of the global containerized maritime cargo flows, ships have become bigger and sophisticated logistic assets [1, 2]. The maritime shipping market expansion has produced several innovations in terms of efficiency and standardized methods to handle freight and to optimize the cargo chain. For instance, standardized containers (i.e., [3]) are secure boxes used to effectively optimize the inter-modal freight transport. However, further added value could only come from technological advances that could sustain expedited data transfer rates and higher data sharing capability to allow for new innovative logistic services, such as real-time cargo monitoring in transit and in the ports, real-time intelligence for ship activity, etc. [4]. In this regard, 5G is recognized as the enabling technology to move logistics closer to harnessing the Internet of Things (IoT) toward higher data density, transfer speeds and lower latency [5]. Indeed, 5G can support a million sensor devices per square kilometer (as opposed to 4G's 100,000 devices) that can be used to increase the visibility of cargoes intransit and in the ports. For this reason, massive IoT is indicated as one of the major 5G use cases to connect ubiquitous sensors, while the Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) is a promising technology for massive IoT that can coexist with 5G New Radio (NR). On top of that, there is an increasing consensus on the idea that satellite networks can help to increase the capabilities of terrestrial networks, especially in terms of broader coverage, reliability and availability, thereby contributing to effectively address some of the 5G use case requirements [6]. With larger constellations and a decrease in end-to-end delay, satellite networks can supply the required backhaul for high-speed services and network environments that are difficult to manage by only terrestrial systems, especially in areas where it is hard to install physical infrastructure [7]. Ultimately, the provision of NB-IoT services leveraging on the enhanced capabilities of 5G along with the combined potential use of satellite networks allow for enhancing on-board ship connectivity in terms of higher data throughput and broader coverage and can pave the way to more efficient cargo shipping operations and new innovative logistic services, e.g., seamlessly connecting vessels to land while they are in open sea to provide continuous transmission of data on monitored goods [8]. In the light of above considerations, in this paper, we design and experimentally evaluate an open and flexible platform (i.e., Maritime Platform) for developing and testing innovative maritime transport services that can be built upon an on-board NB-IoT network integrated with hybrid terrestrial-satellite networks and a standard OneM2M service platform [9] to collect and elaborate data from NB-IoT sensors, making them available to develop maritime application services. These constituent elements definitely make the Maritime Platform a comprehensive 5G network and service infrastructure including mobile, satellite and terrestrial domains that allow for the development of a new breed of 5G-enabled IoT-based value-added applications in the maritime transport and, hence, foster advanced logistic services and new market opportunities for logistic operators. Among the maritime transport services enabled by the proposed platform such as container tracking, autonomous shipping, etc., the cargo ship container tracking is one of the most relevant in terms of market opportunities.