Abstract
With the increasing importance of maritime activities,
the demand for high-capacity, high-data-rate, and reliable
coastal communication systems has increased dramatically.
Near-shore environments that support offshore operations, such
as wind and oil platforms, fisheries, and smart ports, require robust
communication solutions to handle growing data demands.
However, maritime environments present unique challenges,
including multipath fading, shadowing, and interference caused
by vessel movements and unpredictable sea conditions. To
overcome these obstacles, this paper investigates the use of
Rate-Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA) to enhance the capacity
and data rate of near-shore communication networks. RSMA
introduces a flexible approach to interference management
by splitting user messages into common and private streams,
enabling more efficient handling of interference and improving
overall network performance. Our simulation results reveal that
the RSMA significantly outperforms Non-Orthogonal Multiple
Access (NOMA), achieving up to 9 bps/Hz higher sum-rate
performance and offering superior adaptability to dynamic
channel variations in a maritime environment. These findings
highlight RSMA’s potential as an effective solution for the next
generation of near-shore maritime communication systems.