Novel innovations have been witnessed in the past few years in the field of technology for autonomous vehicles. These have been exploited in various applications in the maritime domain; one such application is the proposal to develop autonomous passenger ships (APS) or ferries for carrying passengers in urban waterways. Such technology requires the integration of several components to support the safe and secure operation of the ferries. In this paper, a communication architecture is proposed, that satisfies pre-established communication requirements and supports autonomous and remotely controlled functions of an APS. The architecture was designed using the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL); this enabled an iterative design process to be followed and allows for future improvements. The proposed architecture is verified by showcasing the role of the different architectural components in addressing the requirements and in supporting the expected functions in a number of operational scenarios based on the expected operations of an APS use case called “Autoferry.” Furthermore, the proposed architecture has been evaluated by demonstrating its ability to achieve the expected performance according to the requirements, in simulated experiments using the network simulator GNS3.

在过去的几年中，在自动驾驶汽车技术领域见证了新颖的创新。这些已经在海域的各种应用中得到了利用。一种这样的应用是提议发展自动客船（APS）或渡轮以在城市水道中运送乘客。此类技术需要集成多个组件以支持渡轮的安全运行。本文提出了一种通信体系结构，该体系结构可满足预先建立的通信要求，并支持APS的自治和远程控制功能。该体系结构是使用体系结构分析和设计语言（AADL）设计的；这使得遵循迭代设计过程成为可能，并允许将来进行改进。通过在称为“自动渡轮”的APS用例的预期操作的基础上，展示各种体系结构组件在满足需求和支持多种运行方案中的预期功能中的作用，从而验证了所提议的体系结构。此外，在使用网络模拟器GNS3进行的模拟实验中，通过证明其根据要求实现预期性能的能力，对所提出的体系结构进行了评估。