Design and implementation of a communication system for opportunistic ocean data collection on board fishing vessels

The goal of this thesis is to build a functional prototype system to enable opportunistic subsurface ocean data collection via IoT sensors mounted on fishing gears. Integration with existing fishing vessels is a common sense and cost effective method for ocean observation. However, the diversity of fishing vessel techniques, sizes, and on board systems is a challenge for scaling this solution. There is an increasing variety of sensor options that can work with different fishing techniques. However, the lack of an on-board collection hub to relay this data that can work both the variety of fishing vessels, and different sensors options, holds back wider implementation data collection technique. The following document presents the hardware and software systems for this modular data handling system. The hub system automatically collects data from the two primary wireless sensor communication protocols (Bluetooth and WiFi) and merges sensor data with on-board GPS geo-location. After processing, data can be transmitted via three different types of network communication (WiFi, cellular and satellite) in order to provide flexibility and cost-saving depending upon location, vessel specification, and data requirements. Data is then automatically received and loaded in a cloud-based relational database. While this project was to build a prototype, this hub and accompanying data management systems are currently operational delivering data from two different sensors in near real-time to the European Marine Observation and Data Network