Connectivity through WiFi will become more important in increasing efficiencies and productivity at ports and harbours not only in South Africa but also in the rest of Africa as the use of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, in such environments continues to increase rapidly.

Wireless networking equipment manufacturer Ruckus Wireless sub-Saharan Africa sales director Michael Fletcher states that, to improve service efficiency, these environments should consider WiFi to support business applications.

“We are seeing more and more WiFi being deployed across all industries, including ports and harbours. WiFi is a far more cost-effective and easy-to-deploy access medium of broadband, compared with the global system for mobile communications (GSM) or licence-based options. Deploying Wi-Fi at these areas can provide a better user experience at a much lower cost, compared with GSM,” he explains.

Fletcher adds that there is a need to improve container turnover worldwide and for logistics to ensure the efficient storage and retrieval of containers within a minimum timeframe.

Therefore, the exact positioning and tracking of all containers are key. But to optimally do so, connectivity and reliable connectivity are essential. Access to a reliable connection can enable logistics managers to obtain and manage container, crane and vehicle information in real time, which significantly improves the entire process.

A loss in communication means crane and vehicle positions cannot be tracked, vehicle and container data cannot be sent to the inventory management system and the operator cannot find the next container, slowing down or stopping the entire process.

Continuous tracking of all elements has proved to be the most effective solution and WiFi has been proved to be the effective enabler, Fletcher says.

“In many ports, there is an increasing requirement to move away from simply functioning as a transportation centre to becoming directly involved in added-value activities such as cargo processing and logistics, which require not only new processes, practices and technological advances in stock control and integration but also connectivity. In many cases, getting connectivity at these large, container-based areas can be difficult and expensive,” he says.

While WiFi is beneficial to the operation of ports and harbours, these environments are also challenging from a wireless performance perspective.

Fletcher explains that there is typically little or no existing networking infrastructure and changes in users or cargo density during the day can dramatically impact on radio frequency characteristics and demand load on the network. This often results in poor connections, low user satisfaction and unacceptable network quality to support critical applications.

The company’s collection of technologies, called Ruckus Smart WiFi, is designed to extend the range and reliability of wireless signals. The technologies eliminate much of the cost and complexity of conventional wireless local area network deployments and include recent technical advances in beam steering, beam forming, adaptive signal path selection, quality of service, traffic classification and advanced radio frequency routing.