Providing a stable connectivity in maritime communications is of utmost importance to unleash the full potential of smart ports. Nonetheless, due to the crowded nature of harbor environments, it is likely that some ships are shadowed by others, resulting in reduced received power that subsequently diminishes their data rates-even threatens basic connectivity requirements. Given that UAVs have been regarded as an integral part of future generations of wireless communication networks, they can be employed in maritime communications as well. In this paper, we investigate the use of UAV-mounted relays in order to help mitigate the reduced data rates of blocked links in maritime communications. Various communication architectures are considered based on the positioning mechanism of the UAV; in this regard, fixed, k-means algorithm-based, and landing spot-based positioning approaches are examined. On the other hand, since UAVs are predominantly battery-operated, the energy consumption performances of these approaches are also measured. Results reveal that the landing spot-based UAV relay positioning approach finds the best trade-off between the data rate and energy consumption.

翻译：在海上通信中提供稳定的连接对于充分发挥智能港口的潜力至关重要。然而，由于港口环境的拥挤特性，某些船舶可能会被其他船舶遮挡，导致接收功率降低，进而降低其数据速率——甚至威胁基本连接需求。鉴于无人机已被视为未来无线通信网络不可或缺的组成部分，它们也可应用于海上通信。本文研究了利用无人机搭载中继来缓解海上通信中阻塞链路数据速率降低的问题。基于无人机的定位机制，考虑了多种通信架构：具体而言，研究了固定定位、基于k-means算法的定位和基于着陆点的定位方法。另一方面，由于无人机主要依靠电池供电，本研究还衡量了这些方法的能耗性能。结果表明，基于着陆点的无人机中继定位方法在数据速率与能耗之间找到了最佳平衡。