Near sea-surface radiowave propagation at 5 GHZ

5 GHz Wi-Fi service, which is offered as an alternative to the existing systems used in maritime communication, stands out in terms of being free of charge and being able to meet the required broadband data service. In our country, Wi-Fi networks with output power up to 1W are allowed for outdoor services at the 5 GHz frequency band without requiring a license. In order to use this system in the marine environment, a propagation model must be created for the specified frequencies of the marine communication channel. For this purpose, first of all, sea measurements were made to determine the sea channel. Then, the compatibility and performance of free space, 2-ray, 3-ray, log-distance and dual-slope path loss models in maritime environment were evaluated. Factors affecting the sea communication channel vary depending on the location where the sea communication will take place. Five different approaches have been made for the 2-ray model, taking into account the factors affecting the communication channel for the marine environment. An improvement has been made for the REL (Round Earth Loss) model, which provides increased performance by including receiver antenna height and antenna gains depending on the direct and reflected ray angle. A new piecewise propagation model was proposed using the modified REL and log-distance models. Performance evaluations point that the proposed model showed the highest performance.