Waveguide propagation effect along the cargo hull on board a ship

Channel sounding on board a merchant ship is performed between the cargo hull and the bridge room. Power delay profiles for 3 different spread bandwidths (5 MHz, 10 MHz and 20 MHZ) have been analyzed. From the periodicity and increasing amplitude of the multipath peaks, it can be concluded that the metallic cargo hull forms a structure analogous to the waveguide. The large RMS delay spread found again confirms the waveguide propagation mechanism and the complexity of the metallic merchant ship structure. The small coherence bandwidth shows wideband transmission on board a ship is not feasible.