Offshore wind farm inspection.
Fifteen kilometres out, among towers of steel, the operations base is a dot on the shore and the network is whatever the vessel brought along. This mission is about making the vessel the network: a floating hub that carries the drones, the technicians and the day’s imagery on its own bonded links.
Wind farm operators and marine inspection contractors working turbine fields fifteen to thirty kilometres offshore.
Shore cellular is ragged at that distance and swings with the vessel’s heading; the turbines themselves carve the farm into radio shadows.
The vessel as a floating hub: shore carriers and metered satellite bonded, drones and technician kits riding short hops, imagery draining all day.
The vessel’s onboard computer, the drone’s companion computer and the technician kits — hardware already aboard. One Linux binary each.
The mission
A crew transfer vessel works a forty-turbine farm, fifteen to thirty kilometres offshore. The day’s schedule: a blade-inspection drone flying tower after tower, and technician pairs transferred onto platforms for nacelle work. The operations base ashore wants three things at once — a live view of the blade run, contact with the technicians aloft, and the inspection imagery in the analysis pipeline the same day, because the weather window for the follow-up visit is being decided this afternoon.
What breaks
Shore cellular at that distance is ragged: present on the near rows in good conditions, absent on the far ones, and swinging with the vessel’s heading as the superstructure shadows the antennas. The turbines themselves are steel towers that carve the farm into radio shadows — the drone working the far side of a tower is shadowed from the vessel that launched it. And the imagery problem compounds: a blade run produces tens of gigabytes, which over a thin, intermittent shore link means the analysis pipeline starts tomorrow, or the day after, and the weather window closes unconsulted.
The architecture on this mission
The vessel is the hub. It runs a node bonding everything it can reach shoreward — two cellular carriers on masthead antennas, and a satellite terminal under quota where fitted — into one encrypted tunnel to the operations base. The drone and the technician kits are mesh nodes that ride through the vessel: their short hop to it survives conditions the long hop to shore does not, and when the drone works a shadowed face, a second small node — the launch platform, or a technician’s kit on the adjacent tower — relays around the steel.
Traffic is classed. The technicians’ voice and the drone’s command channel hold reserved floors; the live blade view rides the video class, elastic; the full-resolution imagery is bulk — it lands on the vessel’s node immediately at local-link speed, then drains shoreward store-carry-forward all day, priority first, using every good interval the bonded shore links produce. Selected frames the inspector flags travel high-class at once. By sailing time, the vessel has typically drained the day; whatever remains finishes on the steam home as shore coverage strengthens — the transit itself becomes the fattest part of the pipe.
How the inspection day unfolds
- Sailing out. The vessel leaves the quay with its node bonding two shore carriers on the masthead antennas and the satellite terminal under quota. The tunnel to the operations base is up before the breakwater is astern.
- On station. The drone launches for the first blade run and the technician pairs transfer to their towers. Every kit rides the short hop to the vessel; voice and command hold reserved floors from the first minute.
- The shadowed face. The drone works the far side of a tower, shadowed from the vessel by the steel. Its traffic relays around the shadow through the nearest small node, and the blade run continues uninterrupted.
- The far row. Shore cellular fades to nothing and the vessel’s heading swings the remnants away. Voice and command move to the satellite link — deliberately, under quota — while the live view thins in class order. Full-resolution imagery keeps landing on the vessel at local-link speed and queues.
- The steam home. As shore coverage strengthens the queue drains shoreward, priority first — the transit itself becomes the fattest part of the pipe. By the quay, the day’s dataset is in the analysis pipeline.
- The debrief. The journal timestamps the delivery, states the satellite spend against what the cellular bond carried for free, and adds another day to the per-row coverage picture that will justify a permanent platform relay.
What each mechanism contributes
- Vessel-as-hub mesh topology — drones and technician kits reach shore through the vessel; short hops beat long ones. Shipped.
- Shore-side bonding with quotas — two carriers plus metered satellite as one measured fabric; the expensive link spent deliberately, never accidentally. Shipped.
- Class floors — voice and command guaranteed while imagery fills every remaining byte. Shipped, opt-in.
- Store-carry-forward — the day’s product delivered same-day by draining continuously instead of uploading heroically at the quay. Shipped.
- Continuous measurement — a per-row coverage picture of the farm accumulates for free, informing where a permanent relay on a platform would pay for itself. Shipped.
The honest boundary: Atlas contributes the network. The vessel, the aircraft, the marine approvals and the inspection analytics are the operator’s — and on a farm whose far rows genuinely see no shore signal at all, the answer is the satellite link or a permanent platform relay joining the bond, both of which the architecture already accommodates.
What a pilot should prove
- Coverage at the farthest row, with and without the vessel relay, from the built-in per-link measurement.
- Voice and command continuity for a technician pair and a full blade run, through vessel heading changes and tower shadowing.
- Same-day imagery delivery: the full blade-run dataset in the shore pipeline by end of day, timestamped by the journal.
- Satellite spend under quota for the day, alongside what the cellular bond carried for free.
One farm, one vessel, one inspection day. The evaluation format covers the structure.