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Fisherman Communication at Deep Sea Using Border Alert System

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-2780-7_33

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Fisherman Communication at Deep Sea
Using Border Alert System

N. R. Rajalakshmi and K. Saravanan

Abstract Fishermen are being caught and killed by the naval forces of the neigh-
bouring country, due to the lack of awareness about the ocean frontiers and advanced
alert instruments in the boats. For this reason, maritime security has become major
concerns of all coastal areas to protect the fisherman and providing the assistance
about sea frontiers via alerting, tracking, and monitoring of boat vessel. Thereby, a
path breaking technology of maritime border alert system using smart vessel is pro-
posed here which would foster coast guard officials to effectively monitor fishermen
and alert them if they sail inside the other country’s border. The proposed border
alert system alerts the border to safeguard the fisherman and make good relationship
between seaside nations. This system uses Global Positioning System which helps
to find out the current latitude and longitude values of vessel. If the fishermen are
very close to IMBL means then, this alert system aware the fishermen through an
audio and visual alert. While receiving alerts, if the fisherman did not tag on any
action and move further, then the smart vessel should be reversed automatically and
information will be transmitted to the nearby coast guard officials. Next, the guards
can give assistance and provide additional help to those fishermen. The proposed
system takes the Gulf of Mannar maritime border which is between India and Sri
Lanka as a case study to validate the proposed system.

Keywords Fisherman · IMBL border · LoRa · Maritime border · IMBL alert

N. R. Rajalakshmi (B)
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R and D
Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India
e-mail: rajirajasekaran@gmail.com
K. Saravanan
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Anna University Regional Campus,
Tirunelveli, India
e-mail: saravanan.krishnann@gmail.com

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 283

V. K. Solanki et al. (eds.), Intelligent Computing in Engineering,
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 1125,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2780-7_33
284 N. R. Rajalakshmi and K. Saravanan

1 Introduction

Historically, there is no border problem and no disagreement till the civil war in 1983.
Henceforward, the territorial demarcation happens to create central notion in inter-
national relations among the seaside nations. For instance, the nations are isolated
by the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) borders. The maritime border
system was initiated and developed by the United Nations Convention of the Law of
the Seas (UNCLOS) [3]. This effective IMBL border promotes national sovereignty,
economic prosperity. It also supports to prevent the terrorist attacks and criminal
acts. The formulation of border for marine is the triplet of tourism–transportation
network–economy [29]. The country gets an economic contribution through mar-
itime border which supports the tourism industry. This economic prosperity from
tourism gives the significant impact on enhancement of the country’s development
and prosperity [4, 16]. Maritime spatial planning is implemented in the Romanian
Black Sea coastal zone [8], which is another successful example to standardize the
tourism coastal economic movement [31].
The state has special rights to explore and use the marine resources of exclusive
economic sea zone which is prescribed by the UNCLOS. Many countries (Iran and
Egypt for Saudi Arabia) share the exclusive economic zone [33] for fishing and
customs in the IMBL boundary. The economic development of a country is also
greatly grown through the influence of maritime industry [17]. Regarding the sea,
United Nations agency is held responsible for protection and prevention of ships from
marine pollution and also yields security, safety, and efficiency of international mer-
chant shipping [15]. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) implemented a
system for measuring maritime traffic, marine services, and security. It contributes its
integral role to meet out the target set by United Nations for Sustainable development.
A safe navigation in fishing is required in maritime boundary line border. EUROSUR
[10] is smart border system, which is the concept to implement more dominant and
economic system for border surveillance in a secure way of 24/7 persistence to avoid
illegal intrusion [24].
The Indian coast guard addresses the national defence in terms of marine safety,
security, law enforcement, lifesaving of fisherman, and fisheries. In Tamilnadu state,
about 20,000 vessels make spinning usually stay into the International Maritime
Boundary Line (IMBL) of India–Sri Lanka for fishing. The trans-border fishing
has been going as the most outstanding problem, such as the fishermen cross the
line unwillingly, even though the international laws clearly define and mark the
IMBL line border. They could be easily caught or imprisoned by sea pirates or
foreign navy while crossing IMBL borders inadvertently. But the identification of
international borderline is fairly difficult countenance for fisherman while fishing
[7]. This lack of knowledge in identifying the maritime boundaries of two countries
during fishing could put the lives of the fishermen in a lot of danger such as killing
and detention. The foreign trawler easily overcomes our coast guard security force by
killing or imprisoning the fisherman. Regardless of the existing excellent relations
and elaborate understanding between the Indo-Srilankan, the fishermen issue has
Fisherman Communication at Deep Sea Using Border Alert System 285

lifted up in many occasions [1]. Sometimes, the death of penalty and imprisonment
of the Tamil Nadu fishermen, supposedly by the Sri Lankan Navy, becomes an
emotive right to life and livelihood (human rights) issue in the domestic politics of
maritime boundary.
Next, the difference of opinion is raised between China and ASEAN countries
about the Nine Dash Line Claim of China [2]. The violation in east sea happens often
because China disagrees with the border with other neighbouring countries [20, 21,
23]. Hence, the maritime border identification and fishermen alert is necessary [5].
In 2015, the crossing of borderline ended hazardous to 600 fishermen. The fishermen
in risk is increased every year [14]. Hence, the fishermen should be alerted before
they reach the borderline to avoid hazard. But, the crossing border alerting system is
still inadequate for assisting fishermen automatically.
Thus, the aim of our proposed system designed here is to monitor the fishermen
and encourage them to explore inside our sea within our nation’s border through
smart boat vessel. The communication to coast guard officials leads to assisting the
fishermen effectively. The literature survey is in Sect. 2. Section 3 describes the border
alert system, GPS, coast guard communication, engine control unit. The results and
scenarios are detailed in Sect. 4, followed by Sect. 5, which concludes the paper.

2 Literature Survey

The Internet portfolio of technologies attains major development through (IoT) Inter-
net of Things which connects billion of sensors across the world. The technological
developments in IoT vision shapes the multiple economic sectors, including telecom-
munications, computing, construction and logistics. The way of human life would
be greatly changed due to the fast-growing innovation of Internet of Things. The
computation and storage of IOT devices are offloaded into the cloud environment to
run their operation in smart manner, hence it becomes their client. The cost effective
and scalable solutions are obtained through the implementation of Cloud-based IOT
applications. This work discusses an IoT-based border alert system using GPS and
LoRa modules.
Suresh and Sharath [28, 32] designed a Low Cost Maritime Boundary Identifica-
tion device using GPS System for fishermen navigation and nautical border guidance.
Surekha et al. [27] proposed the system using ARM processor. The location of trav-
elling boat is identified using GPS to alert the fisherman while crossing the boundary.
This crossing information will also be passed to the control section through ZIGBEE
transmitter. Naveen and Ranjith [19] proposed the work using DGPS and GSM for
border alert and smart tracking with in-built alarm. The location of the boat could be
tracked by using DGPS. This system raises an alarm, if the border has been crossed.
Also, the crossing information is transferred to the control room and family members
by the GSM at regular time intervals. Sivagnanam et al. [25, 26] proposed the coast
guard alert and rescue system for intruder of international maritime line crossing,
the exact location of fisherman has been identified with the help of integrated GPS
286 N. R. Rajalakshmi and K. Saravanan

(Global Positioning System) receiver. This position is communicated to the respec-

tive coast guard station via GSM (Global System for Mobile communication). Jim
and Eugene [11] proposed the concept of Advanced Border Alert System Using GPS
and Intelligent Engine Control Unit which is used to stop the movement of fishermen
navigation towards the other country’s border. They detect the location of the boat
via GPS module which is the most accurate and fastest way of locating the vessel,
alert them with the help of an alarm and if smugglers and intruders neglect the alarm,
the boat engine will be stopped to prevent from trespassing into the other border by
an intelligent engine control unit and then alert the coast guard. Kamalakannan et al.
[12] used GSM and LPC2148 Arm microcontroller and Radio Frequency IDentifi-
cation (RFID) to protect the fishermen from crossing the border and from the death
of penalty by the other country navy. When crossing the parental country circum-
stances, the fisherman has been warned by using the alerting devices such as buzzer
with LCD display. Also, The motor will stop functioning automatically at the third
border.
The communication of border crossing information through GSM is unfeasible,
because the coverage of cellular network at deep sea is unworkable and also passing
information to the coast guard officials through Zigbee transmitter is impractical, due
to the coverage of Zigbee transmission is within the metre. The transmission must be
reliable although environment in sea area is tough. Hence, our proposed border alert
system is designed with LoRa and GPS to overcome the above issues [9]. LoRa is a
single-hop wireless communication technology with long range, low power and low
bit rate [18]. It is primarily developed for Internet of Things (IoT) devices requiring
low powered battery and low throughput. Therefore, hereby, LoRa has been used as
a lightweight smart sensing device to pass the border crossing information (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Block diagram of a

ALARM signal and
border alert system Message display to
Fisher man
GPS in BOAT

Engine Control
Arduino
Circuit to reverse
the Boat

LoRa Module

Transmits crossing
information to
Higher official
Fisherman Communication at Deep Sea Using Border Alert System 287

3 Border Alert System

The proposed border alert system is designed to protect the innocent life of fishermen,
which is shown in Fig. 2. The main contribution of this system is alerting the fisherman
and rescuing them from international maritime line crossing punishments. The core
components of proposed system are GPS, Arduino, LoRa Module, Alarm unit, Voice
module along with loud speaker, LCD and Ultra sonic sensor.

3.1 Ultrasonic Sensor

The ultrasonic sensor in fisherman boat safeguards the boat from the collision. This
sensor sends ultrasonic wave which gets objected back by the target. It measures the
distance to the target by measuring the time between the transmission and reception,
that distance is displayed in the LCD.

Fig. 2 Latitude and longitude value of GPS

288 N. R. Rajalakshmi and K. Saravanan

Fig. 3 Flow diagram for identification of trespass movement of fishermen communities

3.2 Global Positioning System

Next, the proposed border alert system uses Global Positioning System (GPS) to
monitor and track the movement of spinning boat vessel which is strayed in sea. The
constant maritime boundary values (latitude and longitude parameters) for Gulf of
Mannar are taken for this experiment (Fig. 3).
Figure 2 shows the value of GPS sensor which is connected to Arduino board to
give the exact location of a vessel and other vital information. The mobility of vessel
aids to predict the ground speed of the spinning boat vehicle and driving behaviour of
the fisherman at the current moment in the IMBL borders. The latitude and longitude
positions of vessel at different time stamps envisage the trespass movement into the
border. The comparison of maritime IMBL boundary reference value with current
moment of fisherman aids to predict the trespass movement into the border. If the
movement of fisherman is identified as beyond the first border of parental country
circumstances means, the boat alarm raises the alarm signal and also the boat LCD
displays the warning message (Figs. 4 and 5).

3.3 Coast Guard Communication

LoRa (Long Range) allows data transferring at extremely low data rates to extremely
long ranges, which uses spread spectrum modulation technique for data transferring.
It is capable to transmit over very long distances with little power and support a
star topology. A ‘star-of-stars’ architecture of LoRa network is designed with three
major components of end devices, gateways and network server. Gateway is a pow-
erful device, connected to a backbone infrastructure to transmit the data between the
IoT end devices and server. It can also receive and decode the multiple concurrent
Fisherman Communication at Deep Sea Using Border Alert System 289

Fig. 4 Output screenshot for border alert system

Fig. 5 Hardware implementation of border alarm circuit

290 N. R. Rajalakshmi and K. Saravanan

transmissions. The Lora node has been built by using Arduino uno and LoRa com-
municates to the gateways over a single wireless hop. The LoRa node can have the
capability of transmitting the data packets in kilometre distance range (Figs. 6 and 7).
The LoRa module in fisherman boats assists to transmit the crossing information
of parental country border to the gateway of coast guard officials. Gateway placed in
the coast guard boat receives the data packet from LoRa. Then, the coast guard can
help the fishermen accordingly. This LoRa node and Gateway is simulated in things
network console with the set of 10 devices that have been taken for validation.

LoRa
Node

LoRa Raspberry
Gateway pi
LoRa Server
Node

LoRa
Node

Fig. 6 Block diagram of LoRa communication to coast guard

Fig. 7 LoRa node data transmission to gateway

Fisherman Communication at Deep Sea Using Border Alert System 291

3.4 Engine Control Unit

If the fisherman boat/vessel is nearer to final IMBL area means then, the engine
control unit would be worked. The Pneumatic valve which is fitted with the fuel
injector would be turned on. This valve reduces the flow of fuel into the engine;
hence the speed of boat engine would be slowed down. Then, the direction handle is
positioned astern by using actuator. Next, the engine should be turned into the astern
direction by admitting compressed air into the cylinder in the correct sequence. Then
the fuel is admitted if the engine arrives at its firing speed. Hence, the vessel will be
reversed automatically by ceasing the air admission. From this, further trespassing
of IMBL border is stopped.

4 Simulation Results

4.1 Case Study

Gulf of Mannar is identified as an India and Sri Lanka maritime border. It is shown
in Fig. 8. This maritime border is the arc of huge circles among locations in the
sequence. Hence, the proposed system uses the latitude and longitude value of Gulf
of Mannar to position the IMBL line.
If the fisherman is crossing the above location, the LoRa node setup in the fishing
boat transfers the crossing information to the gate way. Here, a LoRa node is being
built by using Arduino uno and LoRa module. Hence, the communication takes place
between coast guard and fisherman through channel. The NS3 module is used here
to simulate the behaviour of LoRa node in an accurate way. Initially, the set of 10
nodes have been taken for validation, and then enhanced to 1000 end devices. Our
scenario is validated using one gateway and 1000 number of end nodes. The time
of simulation is constrained to 200 s and end devices are randomly plotted in the
gateway area of 1000 m × 1000 m. The unconfirmed data frames have been sent by
LoRa nodes. Hence, The LoRa module in proposed system send packets to the coast
guard officials, the reliable communication has been made to prevent the trespass
movement into the border (Fig. 9).
The core measurement of proposed border alert system is prevention of trespass
movement into the border. The prevention rate of trespass movement into the border is
calculated by number of boats that received border support from coast guard officials
divided by Total number of boats at the border, which is shown in Eq. 1.

Number of boats send border assist to avoid crossing

Prevention rate of Border Crossing = (1)
Total number of boats at the IMBL border

Saravanan et al. [22] implemented AIS based border alert and prevention system
with better communication coast guard station. They used the instruments with VHF
292 N. R. Rajalakshmi and K. Saravanan

Fig. 8 Gulf of Mannar—Maritime border between India and Sri Lanka

Fig. 9 Packet delivery to

gateway from LoRa nodes
Fisherman Communication at Deep Sea Using Border Alert System 293

to attain the reliable communication between the fishermen and coast security station.
They compared the reliable communication using RF technology. They reported that
the communication is missing at the mid of the sea and also the communication has
been done by around 40 fishing boats. Thereby, they achieved the reliable communi-
cation only for 40 boats. The prevention percentage from border crossing is very low
using RF technology. The reliable communication between the fishermen and coast
security station is good in most of the boats using ECDIS [30]. Hence, the prevention
percentage from border crossing is increased to 74% [13]. The android application is
designed for fishermen to stick on to the system commands to accomplish the target
in the Maritime boundary. But, the reliable communication using mobile applica-
tion [6] at deep sea is measured as 56%. Hence the prevention percentage is 69%.
Sivagnanam et al. [25] used the GPS and GSM technology to protect the fishermen
from border crossing penalty. The exact position is computed using the GPS receiver
and transmit the data to base station. The GSM communication at the deep sea is
unfeasible. The percentage of prevention and reliable communication of GPS and
GSM system is nearly 60%. Therefore, hereby the border alert system designed using
LoRa network for sending packets was to make the reliable communication with the
coast guard officials. Thereby, the boats at the border get support from coast guard.
The percentage of trespass movement into the border is averagely around 85%.
The proposed border alert system has proved through the better attainment in per-
centage of prevention rate of trespass movement of fishermen while fishing. More-
over, it aids the coastal guards to guarantee safeness of fishermen. The fishermen
boats are also stopped from crossing borders using motor reversing mechanism of
the boats.

5 Conclusion

Many livelihood challenges are faced by fishermen, the major problem of fishermen
is dealt in this paper. Herewith, the concept of automatically acquiring the exact
location, calculating ground speed of a spinning boat vehicle at the IMBL borders
and safeguard of fisherman are discussed. Thus, the border alert system using smart
boat saves the innocent life of fisherman from easily caught or imprisoned by sea
pirates or foreign navy.

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