UHF Radio Extender System for Ship to Shore Communications Using 3D SBR for Positioning

Radio Service Coverage Area of UHF Repeater systems is one of the most important performance's elements for shore to ship radio communications within industries around the world. Each implemented system is designed to fulfil their specific demands, which in this case is balancing coverage limitations and transmission power restrictions due petrochemical industry regulations. This paper presents an innovative Analogue UHF Repeater Extender System array design using commercial Radio Repeaters to overcome lack radio communications, improving performance by a minimum of 20dB on the received signal strength indicator (RSSI), on a real world outdoor to indoor and outdoor to outdoor scenarios for cargo operations. A 3D Shoot and Bounce Ray Tracing (SBR) Propagation Model, combining efforts of field strength distribution, time of arrival and propagation-channel environment, is presented to characterise the System's performance analysis. The work is focused on the extender's field measurements and the results comparison to a Wireless InSite 3D SBR simulation model.