Buoy-Fi

Buoy-Fi| Internet on the Ocean

Project Details

The Challenge | Internet on the Ocean

The internet is not easily accessible in many areas of the world, like the Earth’s oceans. Fishermen, sailors, and others have limited data connection with the rest of the world. Although satellite internet is widely available, it is very expensive for a user to implement. Your challenge is to design a low-cost method of delivering internet to people located far away on the ocean.

BACKGROUND

We chose the challenge “Internet on the ocean” because nowadays is important to be connected anywhere at any time; with the invention of the Wi-Fi this has been achieved but still hasn't reached the entire globe, to be precise, the ocean, that's why we wanted to develop a method that can help people to have an easy and efficient access to internet while sailing at the ocean. We consider activities that take place at the ocean such as tourism, logistics and sailing, and they can benefit with this idea, which makes it profitable and an easy way to keep communicated while being away from land.

WHAT IT DOES

Our plan to take internet signal to the ocean is the next:

Take advantage that big tech companies, almost in a yearly basis, have new submarine cables installed all around the world, so our plan is trying to work with them while using their optic fiber cables.
Our project is to have new connections within the previously installed cables, making a “T” connection that goes up to an innovated buoy.
The innovated buoy consists on having a kind of small internet server in it, this to simulate a big internet server office that it's already used in land, this will provide a bigger internet signal than what we have today at the ocean.
Other buoys, between the servers, will work as an internet repeater, this will low our costs of installation, maintenance and production.
The buoys are going to include ways of producing their own energy, which consists on using a Power Buoy, which is a power station for generating energy from wave power. Each buoy is going to produce around 40kw of energy, while for working needs around 15kw of energy.
We will add an “anti-magnet” component covering almost the last layer of this cable (as shown in the figure below). An “anti-magnetic” component is made off a combination of ferromagnetic superconductor elements that cause a distortion in the magnetic fields.

Figure 1. Diagram of a submarine optic fiber cable.

Our “anti-magnetic” layer is planned to be between the layers 1 and 2, but, why the need of implementing a “anti-magnetic” layer? That's because, as we know, aquatic animals follow magnetic fields, as their natural compass, this has been a huge problem because some aquatic animals, specially sharks, have bitten the actual optic fiber cables because they feel the same magnetic fields as what their preys produce and confused them as food. Having anti-magnetic layer produces little to none external electromagnetic fields, having as a consequence no attraction from any aquatic species.

With our project we are expecting to reach more than enough Wifi signal to solve actual communication problems in ocean, even though we can have a lot of obstacles in the environment, so we can reach our goal of having internet signal across the majority of the ocean, or to be more specific, in the most used maritime routes.

NASA RESOURCES

We mainly gathered information of big tech companies such as google and Huawei, which have already work on these field, but NASA helped us understand many forms of data sharing within the method of “Disruption Tolerance Networking”, that gave us a whole new perspective of how we could share information in the most effective way, by receiving full information that was send in a shorter period of time than using other methods.

SPACE APPS OFFERS

We didn’t used any of the programs they offered us because we focused more in finding a way to accomplish our goal with the elements that are already used to transmit internet signals on land, but making them work in the ocean by using new methods, mainly to maintain costs low and taking in consideration that big tech companies will support this important cause because of the benefits they can get.

FUTURE PLANS

In a fast evolving world, technology is always changing and we have to adapt to it. We think our project can improve by making use of new technologies that are going to be created in 5-10 years. We are also searching for a way of having less cables at the oceans, planning to go everything wireless, maybe finding an effective way to use Lifi on the ocean, in the near future.

RESOURCES

https://www.itworld.com/article/2947934/heres-what-to-takes-to-lay-googles-9000km-undersea-cable.html

https://www.elsoldemexico.com.mx/finanzas/huawei-instalara-fibra-optica-submarina-en-bc-3083816.html

https://www.laserfocusworld.com/fiber-optics/article/16562059/tsunami-earthquake-damage-undersea-fiberoptic-cables-in-japan

https://www8.hp.com/mx/es/campaigns/wireless-printing-center/wireless-network-hel

p4.html

https://www.siliceo.es/mejores-antenas-wifi-larga-distancia-30km/

https://www.redeszone.net/2012/07/27/google-fiber-todo-lo-que-tienes-que-saber-sobre-la-fibra-optica-de-google/

https://www.lavanguardia.com/tecnologia/20190408/461521678851/google-facebook-microsoft-amazon-comprando-cables-circula-internet.html

https://www.ecured.cu/NanoStation

https://www.gob.mx/semar/prensa/la-patrulla-oceanica-de-largo-alcance-pola-de-la-armada-de-mexico-se-equipara-con-sistemas-de-deteccion-comunicaciones-y-defensa-de-ultima-generacion

https://www.nauticayyates.com/navegacion/precauciones-boyas-fondeo-repaso-transductores-test-vocabulario-nautico/