A Systematic Mapping Study on Edge Computing Approaches for Maritime Applications

Background: The edge computing paradigm allows to reduce latency and response time of applications by bringing computations and data storage closer to the locations where they are needed. Edge computing is used in different kinds of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Maritime represents an important application domain for IoT applications and edge computing solutions. Modern vessels employ many different types of sensors, which produce a massive amount of data. Edge computing allows to perform computations and data analyses on-board a vessel or at the edge of the network. Objective: To present a comprehensive, unbiased overview of the state-of-the-art on edge computing approaches for maritime applications. Method: A Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) of the existing edge computing approaches for maritime applications. Results: A taxonomy of 17 papers on edge computing approaches for maritime applications. Conclusion: The results of the study show that there is a small number of existing edge computing approaches for maritime applications. Most of the existing approaches focus mainly on monitoring and communication functions in vessels. Moreover, several research gaps exist with respect to the types of edge computing approaches, the purposes of using edge computing on vessels, and the data analysis techniques used for edge computing on vessels.