Reliability and Availability Evaluation of an Autonomous Remote Video Monitoring System for Offshore Sea Farms

In this paper, the availability and reliability of a remote video monitoring system for offshore sea farming plants are studied. The scope of the system is to ensure a video surveillance infrastructure so to supervise breeding cages along with the fish inside them in order to contrast undesired phenomena like fish poaching as well as cages damages. The system is installed on a cage floating structure. It is mainly composed of an IP camera which is controlled by a Raspberry Pi Zero which is the core of the system. Images are streamed thanks to a 3G/4G dongle while the overall system is powered via two photovoltaic panels charging a backup battery. Simulations are carried out considering two seasonal functioning periods (i.e., winter and summer): each of them is characterized by temperature trends defined according to the average temperatures of the system deployment site, 8 km offshore the city of Piombino, Italy. In order to optimize power consumption without hindering application scenario requirements, the system operates according to a duty cycle of 2 minutes out of 15 (i.e., 8 minutes of operation per hour).