Antenna Array Configuration for Reliable Communications in Maritime Environments

The performance and reliability of wireless communications at sea are often limited by the deep fades caused by the coherent sea surface reflection. In this paper, we show that by employing multiple antennas at the base station, the deep fades can be mitigated within a large communication range if the antennas are carefully spaced in the vertical direction. We derive a bound for the range where mitigation of deep fading is guaranteed and evaluate this bound through numerical searching methods utilizing a realistic channel model that considers the curvature of the earth. The numerical results show that the proposed scheme leads to a better system performance compared with a free space scenario in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, if four or more antennas are employed at the base station.