Exploration of X-Band Communication for Maritime Applications in the South China Sea

In this letter, an 87 km microwave link over the ocean was constructed using the evaporation duct to realize the wireless communication between the Chinese mainland and the Hainan Island. During a 24 h uninterrupted experiment, the efficient connection rate reached 97.46%. The median signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) exceeds 40 dB at night, and the partial effect of the channel reception is close to the ceiling of free space. The SNR of 100 Mega-symbols per second (Msym/s) at 10 GHz exceeded 3 dB and reached 10 dB at 10 Msym/s. The experiment results reveal that the communication with evaporation ducts can provide a wide-bandwidth, high-speed, and long-distance propagation method for maritime applications in the South China Sea.