Beamforming for wireless communications between buoys

The marine environment monitoring based on buoys is one of the main methods in marine monitoring. The distance of wireless communications between buoys is critical for oceanographic monitoring. In this paper, a new technique is presented to improve the distance of marine wireless communication using beamforming. An inertial measurement unit (IMU) which consists of tri-axis gyroscopes and accelerometers is installed on the buoy node to track the realtime attitude of the antenna array. The realtime attitude of the antenna array is calculated with a filter scheme. With the result, the relative direction of the destination node to the antenna array is obtained. Then a corresponding algorithm is selected to control phased array antenna beamforming parameters, directing the beam at the destination node. In addition, the solution is simulated under the condition of regular waves. The results reveal that the beamforming technique provides significant power gains and improve the distance between two communicating nodes effectively.