Surveillance Boats Sail Past Dropouts with Peplink

The Municipality of Amsterdam operates electric surveillance boats for diverse tasks, including maintaining law and order, ensuring public safety, and conducting environmental assessments along the city’s canals. To support these operations, they partnered with Peplink’s partner, Network Innovations, to implement a robust onboard communications network.

Challenge

Maintaining reliable connectivity aboard the surveillance boats was crucial for internet access, real-time communication with headquarters, and emergency responses. However, patrolling Amsterdam’s canals posed significant challenges as boats often moved below ground level. This obstructs the line of sight between the transmitter and the receiver on the boat. Previously relying on basic cellular-enabled telephones, operations were hampered by frequent signal dropouts and dead zones, limiting efficiency and reliability.

Solution

Network Innovations, in collaboration with Peplink’s European distributor Frontier EU, deployed HD2 MBX 5G routers and Mobility antennas to the surveillance boats. All devices were configured through InControl for seamless fleet monitoring and management. Strategic placement of the routers and antennas optimized signal reception on each vessel.

The HD2 MBX 5G’s dual cellular capabilities enabled connections to different carriers, while the Mobility antennas enhanced signal reception, ensuring redundancy and access to the strongest available 5G or LTE signals, even in obstructed areas. Paired with SpeedFusion technology, connections could be bonded for increased bandwidth or instantly failover to active links, ensuring uninterrupted communication.

Result

While some surveillance boats were still under construction, Network Innovations collaborated closely with the boat engineers to ensure a smooth installation process for the Peplink devices. The InControl platform allows for easy configuration when scaling the solution. Ultimately, this enabled the Municipality of Amsterdam to save on manpower, while still maintaining visibility of network and vessel status.

The new connectivity solutions significantly improved the operational stability and effectiveness of Amsterdam’s mobile surveillance system. With enhanced access to more connections, the surveillance boats can monitor and report data without interruptions, and onboard crew are able to confidently communicate with the headquarters.

“With the Peplink routers in place for a stable and resilient network, our client’s problem was completely solved. The Peplink routers support multiple cellular connections using different carriers and technologies. This redundancy has helped ensure that those on board the vessels can connect to the nearest and strongest available cellular tower to maintain a reliable connection, even when dealing with obstructions and line-of-sight issues.”

Leon-Marc Roefs, Account Manager of Government and Defence, Network Innovations

Deployment

HD2 MBX 5G

  • Deployed to surveillance boats for dual cellular connectivity
  • Increases network redundancy for less dropouts
  • Fleet management through InControl

Mobility Antennas

  • Connected to the HD2 MBX 5G
  • 5G-capable and high-gain
  • Enhances signal reception when below ground

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