STAND-OFF DISTANCES FOR NON-LINE-OF-SIGHT MARITIME MOBILE APPLICATIONS IN 5 GHz BAND

Non-line-of-sight (NLoS) maritime mobile radio channel in 5 GHz band is experimentally investigated in this paper through wideband channel soundings. During the measurements, the transmitter was installed onboard a speed boat, while the receiver was placed on the roof top of a building on shore. Different types of cargo ships anchored off the east coast of Singapore were examined as obstructions for the NLoS propagations. Besides power delay profile (PDP), stand-off distance is introduced in this work to analyze the NLoS propagations associated with three different types of cargo ships. The measured PDPs and stand-off distances are found to be comparable qualitatively with the simulated results using 3-D ray tracing. The reported information is found to be useful for military applications such as unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) in maritime environments or surveillance.