The BLUECOM+ solution will be the first to provide broadband Internet access at remote ocean areas through standard wireless access technologies, explore emerging wireless technologies as a basis to enable cost-effective, long range wireless communications, and enable a long-term communications infrastructure that extends broadband communications on land to remote ocean areas, both at surface and underwater.

The BLUECOM+ project will achieve a proof-of-concept prototype demonstrating:

1. The feasibility of the BLUECOM+ concept
2. Its ability to enable a communications service supporting data collection and dissemination from intelligent platforms and human activities in remote ocean areas, as requested in the call for Type III projects. In addition, the proof-of-concept prototype will enable the demonstration of the feasibility of using the BLUECOM+ solution to provide cost-effective, broadband Internet access for ships, namely those sailing along the marine corridors crossing the Portuguese and Norwegian Economic Exclusive Zones, including fishing, cargo, and cruise ships.

Advantages on the BLUECOM+ proof-of-concept prototype that will set up in Sesimbra:

1. The coastal and oceanographic vessels provided by IPMA, which will be used as floating anchors for the FWRs;
2. The experience of INESC TEC with the MARitime wireless networks testBED (MARBED);
3. The use of INESC TEC’s unmanned surface and underwater vehicles as intelligent platforms at the ocean transmitting data in real time.

The BLUECOM+ proof-of-concept prototype expected to be achieved is shown in the above image. It will allow the demonstration of:

1. Real-time marine data dissemination to the Internet from intelligent platforms at surface and underwater – in the prototype we will use INESC TEC’s ASV ROAZ II8 and AUV MARES9 shown in the image, which have been developed in-house and extensively tested and used in real environment operation along several past national and international projects, e.g., the FP7 ICARUS project targeting search and rescue operations;
2. Users’ access to state of the art Internet-based services and applications available on land through the airborne multi-hop network, such as VoIP, web browsing, and e-mail;
3. Broadband Internet access at the remote ocean area using standard wireless access technologies – without loss of generality we will demonstrate this using a standard Wi-Fi link between a regular terminal (e.g., smart phone, laptop) and the FWR deployed in the oceanographic vessel.