Enhanced Path Loss Modeling of Shore-to-Vessel 3D Wireless Links Using Ordinary Kriging

Abstract

Accurate path loss (PL) modeling is essential for designing reliable wireless communication systems in complex maritime Shore-to-Vessel (S2V) environments. Conventional empirical models, such as the Close-In (CI) and Floating Intercept (FI) models, often fail to capture three-dimensional (3D) propagation effects, such as antenna height variations and water surface reflections. To address this gap, we analyze a 2.4 GHz S2V measurement dataset collected at two antenna heights. We apply and validate a geostatistical method, Ordinary Kriging (OK), to model the spatially correlated shadow fading (SF) in PL. Results show that incorporating spatial correlation with OK significantly improves prediction accuracy, reducing the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) by at least 45% compared to the CI model and by 23% under more constrained training. Jointly training with data from both antenna heights provided a more robust channel model. In this scenario, data from the higher antenna height provided better spatial representation, underlining the importance of antenna placement. This work demonstrates that geostatistical methods enhance 3D PL modeling in S2V channels, enabling more reliable maritime communication design, particularly for autonomous platforms.