Design of NMEA2000 CAN Bus Integrated Network System and Its Test Bed: Setting Up the PLC System in Between Bridge–Bow Room Section on a Container Ship as a Backbone System

Following the recent changes in international agreements enforced by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and considering the Korean environment where both the safety of old ships and the IoT technology have emerged as the major issues, even the old operational ships are required to establish the Controller Area Network (CAN Bus) system to be connected with a backbone network referred as the Ship Area Network (SAN) by installing communication cables to control and monitor shipboard electronic equipments when they are newly added to the ship’s system. For existing operational ships, an extensive work may be needed for the establishment of the SAN system that uses unshielded twisted pair cables (UTP) depending on the location of the system to be installed as the most parts of the ship are made of steels. Such work could generate time, space and cost-related risks (e.g., large vessels require up to millions of Korean won per day as an anchorage charge). As the result of experiment, it was possible to install the PLC system within a few hours using existing power cables and placing a PLC modem at the spot on 180 m section (approximately 2/3 of ship’s length). Also, with the proposed technology, costs were reduced as much as over 70 % compared to the UTP- and STP-based ship data communication system which requires additional cable installments. Therefore, we were able to confirm both the efficient communications and the cost-reducing effects and expect that this technology will become a foundation technology for the e-Navigation system using IoT technology, as well as for the various industrial settings.