A performance evaluation of AIS-based ad-hoc routing (AAR) protocol for data communications at sea

Abstract

Future ships at sea would need broad and stable data communication system like that on land. Current satellite and RF media do not satisfy the needs of communications due to high costs and low bandwidth respectively. In this paper, we introduce an AIS (Automatic Identification System)-based ad-hoc network model and an AIS-based ad-hoc routing protocol (AAR) which can enhance ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore data communications environments remarkably. We also show through simulated results by QualNet that AAR offers better performance in terms of throughput, end-to-end delay and packet loss ratio than the conventional ad-hoc routing protocols such as AODV and LAR. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.