Designing Laboratory for IoT Communication Infrastructure Environment for Remote Maritime Surveillance in Equatorial Areas Based on the Gulf of Guinea Field Experiences

The steady increase of the world population and economy leads to an increase in both types and amounts of goods transported over seas, which further inevitably leads to an increase of criminal activities in the maritime arena. In order to stifle criminal activities nations are forced to develop sophisticated sensor networks. The backbone of any sensor network is a communication network which connects all sensors with the command centers, most often located hundreds of kilometers away from the sensors. In developing countries, communication networks are very often poorly developed, leaving only satellite links as somewhat reliable means of communication. Henceforth, in this paper, a laboratory for the Internet of Things (IoT) communication infrastructure environment designed to facilitate maritime sensor network design process in areas where communication network is dependent on data transfer over satellite links is presented. In order to successfully describe and develop a laboratory for IoT communication infrastructure environment, necessary data are collected during the design and deployment of a maritime surveillance network in the Gulf of Guinea. The main advantage of the proposed laboratory environment is the inclusion of satellite link simulation in the IoT laboratory environment. This feature provides an opportunity to cover a much broader scope of IoT solutions compared to other IoT laboratories.