An expert panel provided insight into the latest developments in offshore vessel communications during Riviera Maritime Media’s How LEO satellites will transform maritime and offshore connectivity webinar
This event, sponsored by Intellian and Speedcast, was held 22 March 2022 during Riviera’s Offshore Energy Webinar Week,
On the panel were Fugro director of positioning and construction support Alastair McKie, Speedcast director for commercial maritime products Sandro Delucia and Intellian senior director, product line management Prakash Hari.
From OneWeb, Celeste Endrino-Cowley, director for maritime and energy and Carole Plessy, vice president for maritime and energy, were on the panel.
These experts explained how low earth orbit (LEO) satellites are positioned to offer the maritime and offshore industries another option for high-speed communications and connectivity.
Ms Endrino-Cowley explained how OneWeb was constructing a LEO constellation for the offshore industry’s future communications needs. She said almost three-quarters of OneWeb’s planned 648 satellites had been launched and commissioned. The launch of OneWeb’s next package of satellites has been delayed by political issues, but there are plans to continue building the constellation.
“We have 70% of satellites in orbit, delivering connectivity to sites in northern latitudes,” she said.
In total, 648 satellites are planned in 19 launches forming 12 orbital planes to provide global LEO coverage. 588 will be active satellites with 60 in-orbit spares. Forty ground stations will act as satellite network portals.
“We will be able to deliver 100 mbps to a vessel with low latency of 70 ms,” she added. LEO satellites are 1,200 km from earth, compared with medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites that orbit around 8,000 km high and have latency of around 180 ms; and geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites are at a height of 35,000 km with a latency of 600-800 ms.
“Low latency really matters within the offshore industry,” said Ms Endrino-Cowley. “Our mission is to transform connectivity. To provide enterprise-grade connectivity at sea to support accelerated digitalisation within the industry.”
She expects LEO satellites will allow large volumes of data to be transmitted in real-time for critical operations, such as remote inspection and surveys, offshore internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing.
“IoT and cloud can be enabled with high-speed connections at low latency,” said Ms Endrino-Cowley. “The connected offshore field provides greater insight and improves performance across the value chain.”
In maritime sectors, she said vessels will be able to get 1 terabyte per month of data “to drive IoT and connect the bridge to shore in real time.” Remote operations mean putting fewer seafarers into hazardous situations, while those on ships will get more bandwidth for crew welfare applications. “Seafarers could get the same level of online access as ashore,” said Ms Endrino-Cowley.
Ms Plessy said OneWeb will pilot connectivity in the offshore sector this year and it plans to offer LEO communications in the maritime market in 2023.
“We will be working with our partners to bring connectivity to merchant and passenger ships, fishing and offshore support vessels in 2023,” she said. “We will bring connectivity at sea with 10 times more bandwidth than available now, but at similar costs.”
Ms Plessy said OneWeb would work with distribution partners such as Speedcast, Marlink and Applied Satellite Technologies (so far announced) and hardware partners, including Intellian.
“This is a risk-free approach to launch with a proven solution and distribution partners who will package this,” said Ms Plessy.
“We are working to make sure it fits in different sectors as there is no one solution.” This could involve 10 Mbps for fishing vessels and over 100 Mbps for offshore vessels.
Mr McKie said low latency and high speeds will be important for operating autonomous vessels for offshore applications. “For data volumes, up to 50 GB per day could be required to transfer data to shore,” he said.
This could be used by offshore survey companies to transfer seabed bathymetric and seismic survey data to shore for processing. Most survey data currently remains on board ships where it is processed, or is transferred in packages.
“Low latency is critical for command and control operations,” said Mr McKie. Fugro requires low latency to remotely control its fleet of unmanned surface vessels (USVs). Fugro’s new generation of USVs have Intellian-supplied VSAT on board for Ku-band satellite communications over GEO satellites.
For crewed vessels, bandwidth will need to be higher for welfare services on top of the rising operational requirements. Internet and social media are growing in importance for offshore vessel crews. “Everyone expects to stream everything in real time,” said Mr McKie. “But we are not there at present, and it is a challenge to users and vessel owners.”
Other considerations are service quality, the bandwidth pipes to vessels, the price of connectivity and system redundancy.
“It is important to keep this in perspective,” said Mr McKie. “Sometimes total bandwidth is important and sometimes cost is more important. Flexibility is most important for all of this.”
Some crewed vessels operating close to infrastructure will need two VSAT antennas.
“Sometimes vessels are close to platforms and wind turbines,” he continued. “They still need high reliability and cannot lose communications. If they do, the missions must stop.” This makes having fast, low-latency and reliable communications critical for vessel operations.
Mr McKie would welcome communications over LEO satellites for their low latency, high capacity and global coverage, but there is still a wait for services to vessels. “LEO will be part of the toolkit of the integrated communications package,” he said.
Speedcast’s Mr Delucia agreed LEO constellations will be part of an integrated suite offered to offshore and maritime sectors. “We bring all systems together – GEO, MEO, LEO and 5G – into solutions to drive transformation,” he said. “They complement each other in hybrid networks.”
Speedcast has partnered with OneWeb to test and trial LEO satellites in offshore and maritime. “We have been involved in testing and will do field trials later this year as OneWeb is the latest addition to our communications tool box,” said Mr Delucia.
He added different types of communications are needed for crew welfare, IoT, analytics and cloud-based services. “Reducing latency provides access to cloud services, where shaving off milliseconds will be important,” he continued.
Edge computing will also be important in these packages as this reduces the volume of data to be transferred from vessels to shore.
There will also be applications for virtual machines and virtual networks for business services, crew connectivity, IoT and machine-to-machine applications and for broadband pipes for third parties – contractors and client.
Intellian’s Mr Hari explained how antenna technology will enable satellite constellations and different frequency bands to benefit from integrated connectivity.
“All constellations in different orbits are all part of a one integrated network,” he said. These can be brought together with Intellian’s 2.4-m series VSAT antennas, which cater for multi-band communications, C, Ku and Ka bands of radio communications, for drill rigs, floating production systems and fixed installations.
Intellian also supplies terminals for dual-band or single-band VSAT with the NX series of antennas, ranging in diameter from 80 cm to 1.5 m, which are suitable for offshore support vessels and other ships.
“We are working with OneWeb to develop an antenna and terminal for offshore and maritime,” said Mr Hari. “In the offshore market, there is a need for data and critical applications that LEO can deliver.”
He also thinks cloud and edge computing will benefit from the low latency of LEO satellites which will also be useful for crew welfare applications, such as for telemedicine “for clinical health care remotely” and video conferencing.
How do you think LEO will be utilised on remote sites?
Maintain existing kit and not change anything: 4%
Replace principle primary communications system with LEO: 30%
Upgrade L-band only systems to LEO with L-band as back-up: 3%
Use LEO to complement existing GEO leveraging the benefits of each system: 63%
In what area will low latency links have maximum impact?
Crew welfare 7%
Decision-based analytics: 10%
Cloud wervices and wolutions: 53%
Remote monitoring: 27%
Safety: 3%
To what extent will LEO disrupt GEO in terms of market share?
100%: 6%
75%: 29%
50%: 42%
25%: 23%
Do you think the maritime connectivity challenge is getting easier?
Yes - getting easier: 53%
No - getting harder: 30%
Same as it ever was:17%
Should offshore connectivity be the same as onshore?
Yes: 86%
No: 14%
What is the biggest challenge you have on your current connectivity?
Low speed: 48%
Latency: 22%
Billing: 4%
Reliability: 11%
Customer support: 15%
What would be the most challenging factor on adapting LEO connectivity?
Commercial: 55%
Organisational (organising changes, competing activities or latest issues, comfort with current solution): 18%
Facility design (movements, hazardous areas, space, etc): 13%
Project delivery (priority of business, logistics, methodology): 14%
What would be the transformative benefit of introducing enterprise-grade LEO connectivity into your operations?
Increased the use of onshore control rooms: 8%
Implementation of new process and crew safety systems: 12%
Implementation of remote inspections technology using ROV, drones and robots: 32%
Migration of operational systems to the cloud from in the field: 40%
Improvement to crew welfare: 8%
What is the number one priority driver for connectivity for your business?
Secure communications: 8%
Cloud and edge computing services: 8%
Crew welfare: 7%
Business and operations: 67%
Critical infrastructure monitoring: 10%
Are you planning for LEO to form one part of your connectivity strategy or to be your primary network?
Part of: 60%
Primary: 36%
Not at all: 4%
On the panel of Riviera’s How LEO satellites will transform maritime and offshore connectivity webinar were (left to right): Fugro director of positioning and construction support Alastair McKie, OneWeb director for maritime and energy Celeste Endrino-Cowley, Speedcast director for commercial maritime products Sandro Delucia and Intellian senior director, product line management Prakash Hari. OneWeb vice president for maritime and energy Carole Plessy also joined the panel to answer attendees’ questions
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