Historically, the steel structure of ships has acted as an impenetrable barrier to connectivity, transforming vessels into enormous Faraday cages that block traditional signals such as Wi-Fi. This limitation has forced the maritime industry to rely on expensive and complex cabled infrastructures, whose installation requires kilometres of cabling, perforations in watertight bulkheads and weeks of technical downtime. The report prepared by Thetius and ScanReach addresses how this dependence on cable has hindered true digitalisation aboard, creating critical blind spots in crew safety and asset monitoring.
The disruptive solution presented is based on low-energy Wireless Mesh technology, specifically designed to penetrate and propagate through complex steel environments. Unlike traditional systems that require a cable-connected access point at each location, this technology uses plug-and-play nodes that communicate with one another to form a robust and redundant network. This allows a complete ship to be digitalised within hours rather than weeks, eliminating the need for dry dock for installation and enabling a flexible digital backbone for future IoT applications.
In the realm of safety, the impact is immediate and quantifiable through solutions such as ConnectPOB. The ability to locate each crew member in real time transforms emergency protocols, moving from manual counts prone to error to instantaneous digital visibility. Case studies highlight how this technology dramatically reduces mustering times in drills and real emergencies, enabling captains to make decisions based on precise data regarding personnel location, especially in critical situations where visibility is nil or access is dangerous.
From an operational and sustainability perspective, “wireless intelligence” unlocks access to data that were previously economically unfeasible to capture. The network enables deployment of environmental sensors in hard-to-reach areas, such as cargo holds or engine rooms, to monitor everything from cargo integrity to fuel consumption in real time. This not only facilitates predictive maintenance and waste reduction, but also provides the traceability and verifiable data demanded by new ESG regulations and charterers, transforming onboard connectivity into a strategic competitive advantage.
“Onboard connectivity should not be a technical obstacle, but a tool that transforms the culture of reactive safety into proactive real-time management, where the elimination of cables unlocks the true operational visibility of the vessel.”
The main inputs and contributions are:
- Wireless Mesh technology overcomes the physical limitations of steel structures (Faraday cages), enabling reliable data transmission through bulkheads and decks without the need to install the complex cabling infrastructure required by conventional Wi-Fi systems.
- A dramatic reduction in implementation costs and timescales is demonstrated by eliminating the need to run kilometres of cable and make perforations in the structure, allowing complete installation of the IoT network on an operating vessel within hours rather than the weeks required for cabled solutions.
- Implementation of personnel location systems aboard (ConnectPOB) enables reduction of mustering times by more than 60% during emergencies, providing officers with a real-time view of each crew member’s location and automating the count that was traditionally manual and prone to error.
- The Olympic Subsea case study validates the technology in real operational environments, highlighting how digital visibility of the crew improves not only safety during drilling and construction operations, but also the efficiency of drills and management of human resources aboard.
- The network allows straightforward integration of third-party environmental sensors (such as in the case of livestock or refrigerated cargo monitoring with Ruuvi sensors), facilitating control of critical conditions such as temperature, humidity and dangerous gases in spaces that were previously operational blind spots.
- The solution acts as a scalable “digital backbone” that avoids technology lock-in (vendor lock-in), allowing shipowners to add new applications and sensors to the existing network as their needs evolve, without requiring new investment in base infrastructure.
- The ability to obtain real-time data on fuel consumption and asset performance (ConnectFuel) enables transition from static reports based on “paper” to dynamic decision-making, facilitating compliance with increasingly strict environmental regulations and improving the ESG rating of the fleet.
- Critical operational redundancy is established, as the internal mesh network functions autonomously and independently of the ship’s satellite connection, ensuring that safety and internal monitoring data continue to flow and remain available to the crew even if ship-to-shore connectivity is lost.
“Connected operations begin with wireless. It is the means by which vessels transition from reactive systems to intelligent networks that protect people, assets and operational availability.”
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