This paper is dedicated to some aspects of maritime on-board safety improvement. The contribution of this article is a proposal to extend wireless communication on the ship, supported by examples of solutions that have not previously been used on board. Analyzed aspects concern the measurement and control signal transmission in hostile marine environment. A problem to solve is formulated, how to reduce a negative impact of this environment on effectiveness and reliability of maritime on board communication. The proposed ways for solving a problem under consideration cover recommendations concerning some aspects of ship construction and implementation of wireless sensor network. The main topic faced by the paper is concentrated on case study-based ZigBee as well as WiFi networks implementation in the area of the acquisition of data from sensors and measuring transducers connected to the terminal network. The exemplary implementation of ZigBee network, elaborated in Gdynia Maritime University is related, firstly, to the configuration of a simple wireless measurement and control channel, and secondly, to wireless communication channel supported by autonomously working microprocessor measurement and control system. WiFi networks were also tested in the same area of application. Finally, some concluding remarks are formulated.
Keywords: WiFi; ZigBee; marine environment; measurement and control; safety improvement; signal transmission; wireless sensor network.