Marine Internet for Internetworking in Oceans: A Tutorial

Abstract

Ever-increasing human activities in oceans require handy, reliable and cost-effective high-speed network access similar to terrestrial Internet services to be available on and under water. However, terrestrial Internet cannot be extended to oceans seamlessly due to huge differences between terrestrial and oceanic environments, while satellite services are still very expensive especially for ordinary users with communication quality susceptible to weather conditions, and cannot cover underwater networks either. Therefore, marine Internet, proposed about six years ago, is the earliest scheme that tries to systematically address the internetworking issue in oceans and still in its infancy stage. This tutorial aims to introduce the principle, architecture and applications of marine Internet, along with discussion on oceanic environments for communication, currently available and under developing communication systems in oceans, as well as challenging issues necessary for further studies to foster the development of marine Internet.