Student Invents Satellite-Base Communication Tool for Fishermen

Surabaya, E Java, (Antara) - Qurrotul Aini, a doctoral student of Electrical Engineering at Surabaya Institute of Technology, East Java Province, is designing a satellite-based communication tool for fishermen to overcome illegal fishing and increase the number of maritime industry production.

Aini stated here on Monday that fishing boats with weights below 30 Gross Ton (GT) have no satellite-based communications tools. In fact, the Indonesian Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries requires ships with weights above 30 GT to make use of the system.

To cope up with this issue, she is designing a tool with the Breadth Fixed Gossip (BFG) data traffic optimization algorithm that combines Breadth First Search (BFS) search algorithm, fixed radius model, Gossip algorithm, and Chaos Particle Sweep Optimization (PSO) on a dynamic network.

"Based on the data from the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries in 2012, the number of fishing boats under 30 GT was 98 percent of the total number of fishing vessels in Indonesia," she noted.

She added that during this time, fishing boats use Vessel Monitoring System (VSM) to communicate between them, while the ground monitoring center uses satellite media. However, many Indonesian fishing boats weighing under 30 GT are not yet equipped with satellite-based communications tools.

"We want to develop a maritime mobile network for fishing boats under 30 GT for Indonesian fishermen who do not have satellite-based communications tools," Aini, who is also a lecturer at the Information System Study Program at Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic University, Jakarta, remarked.

Her research on the tool had been conducted since 2013. The research generated optimization algorithm on fish catch locations by using Firefly Algorithm (FA) and Genetic Algorithm (GA).

Aini pointed out that through the algorithm and a simulation she has made, fishermen could exchange information via satellite and detect the current location of ill foreign fishing vessels.

"This modeling is expected to be able to identify data traffic between ships and locate fishing areas with abundant fish. This system is also expected to overcome illegal fishing," Aini revealed.(*)