## 3 Internet of Things in Industrial Applications
### Recap of Present-Time Research Trends in the Maritime IIoT
The proposed VB-RA scheme demonstrates superior performance in comparison to classical methods even when the average power consumption of shipborne-BS is considered. Because of the demerits of satellite and cellular communication systems which include high cost and network coverage for maritime applications, marine users habitually find it difficult to connect with other vessels and people based onshore. To support better communication applications such as extended signal coverages and connectivity improvements, a wireless multi-hop backhaul network is developed in [53] by selecting the best path from marine user devices to onshore-based terrestrial users. This is achieved by the elimination of quality degraded links using system signal to noise ratio (SNR) in long-range Wi-Fi networks. Furthermore, the expected transmission count (ETC) metric of Optimized Link-State Routing (OLSR) protocol is adopted for determining the quality of the links between access routers in the developed ad-hoc mesh networks. A synopsis of research progress in the IIoT is briefly presented in Section 3.1. In this section, the evolution of WSN technology in application to the maritime industry is discussed. To begin with, the works done in [48] investigates the viability of high-speed maritime WSN technology based on LTE, where a testbed is developed for pelagic operations constituting the embedment of propagating oceanic vessels with marine routers so that they can easily communicate with coastal-mounted BSs and operation centres for useful decision-making procedures in the monitoring and control of surrounding marine activities. The projects embarked in this work [48] aims at designing WSN-based seawater networks that are capable of providing large volumes and varieties of data services to marine users at considerably high data rates. More so, the enhancement of the maritime communication capacity, data rate and spectral efficiency can be achieved using LTE technology such that the merits of advanced communication techniques such as MIMO and aggregation are exploited to achieve a communication \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline
**Satellite Orbit** & **Height over Equator (km)** \\ \hline LEO: Low Earth Orbit & 200–2000 \\ MEO: Medium Earth Orbit & 10,000–20,000 \\ GEO: Geostationary Orbit & 35,786 \\ HEO: High Elliptical Orbit & 500–50,000 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: Overview of satellite communication orbits and characteristics [53]. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline
**System/Project** & **Communication Technology** & **Communication Coverage (km)** & **Maximum Data Rate (kb/s)** & **Cost** \\ \hline DSC-1 & MF/HF & \(>\)463 & 0.1 & Low \\ DSC-2 & VHF & 120 & 1.2 & Low \\ AIS & VHF & 120 & 9.6 & Low \\ NAVDAT & MF & 556 & 18 & Low \\ VDES & VHF & 120 & 307 & Low \\ India Project & Low-rate Wi-Fi & 52 (ship-to-shore) & 3000 & Low \\ WISEPORT & WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) & 15 & 5000 & Medium \\ TRION & WiMAX (IEEE 802.16d) & 14.2 (ship-to-shore) & 6000 & Medium \\ MariComm & LTE (ship-to-shore) & 120 & 7600 & Medium \\ BLUECOM+ & IEEE 802.16e (air-to-surface) & 30 & 5500 & Medium \\ Immarsat C & Geo Satellite & Global, except polar regions & 0.6 & High \\ Immarsat GX & Geo Satellite & Global, except polar regions & 50,000 & High \\ VSAT & Geo Satellite & Global, except polar regions & 46,000 & High \\ Iridium & Leo Satellite & Global & 134 & High \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: A summary of maritime wireless communication project characteristics [48]. coverage of about 100 km from the coastline. As previously mentioned, satellite communication networks are known for their high implementation cost. This stimulates the need for the development of more reliable and affordable coastal communication technologies where the benefits offered by routing protocols can be capitalized on for the operation of marine activities. For this reason, an overview of wireless mesh communication technologies and protocols is documented for maritime communication networks.