An implementation of standardization for telecom systems on ships and offshore plants based on the TMS

Telecom systems for ships and offshore plants used to be tools for long-distance communication in the past. Today, telecom systems combined with evolving IT ensure safety, accident prevention and cost saving for ships and offshore plants. In the future, all systems will be managed and controlled by telecom systems. Yet, the IMO and Classification Societies have neither revised nor amended the requirements and certification concerning telecom systems for decades. The failure to establish a standardized scheme applicable to telecom systems hinders ships and offshore plants from adopting advanced next-generation technologies widely used on land. Thus, unstandardized telecom systems are manufactured and installed for different user demands. Consequently, complicated interfaces impede the scalability and compatibility between telecom systems. Ships and offshore plants require advanced stability and diversity compared to their onshore counterparts. Unless the communication systems for ships and offshore plants are duly verified before use, serious adverse effects including marine accidents may ensue. This paper proposes a method of standardization to implement safe, scalable and general-purpose telecom systems for ships and offshore plants. The standardization of communication systems for ships and offshore plants facilitates the simplification and systematization of interfaces, and thus maximizes system inter-operability. Also, ships and offshore plants should adopt the standardized communication systems to enhance data reliability. This paper demonstrates the superior stability and performance of the proposed standardized communication system compared to the existing systems. Moreover, it proves the proposed system ensures the stable performance and fast data processing even in emergency. The standardized system for ships and offshore plants is a requisite for quality improvement, cost saving and stable performance. The findings of this paper are applied to the Smart Ship Solution for standardized integrated communication systems for containers, VLCC and LNG. Also, this paper analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of telecom systems configuration in TMS for offshore plants. In addition, it experimentally demonstrates the advantages of the proposed standardization of telecom systems in light of processing time and system operation cost.