Wireless communication within spaces aboard naval ships is being studied. The objective is low-cost, easy-to-install augmentation of data flow to and from sensors and control equipment. Wireless communications has the potential advantage over wired communication of not jeopardizing watertight integrity. However, due to the highly reverberant nature of ship interiors, RF signals below decks are subject to fading and other multi-path effects that limit their usefulness. In order to mitigate these potential performance limitations, we examine the utility of alternative antennas on the infrastructure side of the wireless links. The impact of using electrically reconfigurable antennas for the transmitter was characterized by measuring received signal quality and estimating the Shannon channel capacity of various wireless links within the engine room aboard Thomas S. Gates (CG 51). This ship is a decommissioned Ticondewga-class cruiser. The wireless measurement system employed the Wireless Open-Access Research Platform (WARP) hardware with a packet structure closely resembling the IEEE 802.11g standard. Reconfigurable antennas were found to improve communication performance and reliability when compared to omnidirectional antennas.
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