Wireless Network for Offshore Renewable Energy Installations- Software Defined Radio Approach

The paper first reviews the wireless communication systems used in the offshore environment. It focuses on Software Defined Radio (SDR) as a wireless solution for offshore renewable energy installations (wind, solar, and wave farms). Line of sight links, network topologies, hybrid structures, spatial diversity, and multiplexing are considered to improve throughput. The final implementation proposed is a remotely managed SDR-based network that supports inter-device communication to control and monitor offshore energy installations. The SDR platform facilitates flexible network design (such as adding new sensors and actuators without modifying the underlying network) over the widely used Ethernet-based network. GNU Radio software is used for the development of the SDR. USRP SDR will be used to carry out offshore experiments. 3D models of Arklow wind park turbines are created in Sketchup, then imported to MATLAB where the wireless network within the wind farm is simulated using ray tracing. USRP SDR will be used to carry out offshore experiments.