1 System Architecture and Communication Infrastructure for the RoboVaaS project - Submitted to IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering Emanuele Coccolo, Cosmin Delea, Fabian Steinmetz, Roberto Francescon, Alberto Signori, Ching Nok Au, Filippo Campagnaro, Vincent Schneider, Federico Favaro, Johannes Oeffner, Christian Renner, Michele Zorzi Abstract Current advancements in waterborne autonomous systems, together with the development of cloud- based service-oriented architectures and the recent availability of low-cost underwater acoustic modems and long-range above water wireless devices, enabled the development of new applications to support ships and port activities. Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) can, for instance, be used to perform bathymetry and environmental data collection tasks to ensure under-keel clearance and to monitor the quality of the water. Similarly, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) can be deployed to inspect ship hulls and typical port infrastructure elements, such as quay and sheet pilling walls. In this paper we C. Delea (email: cdelea@cml.fraunhofer.de), Ching Nok Au (email: ching.nok.au@cml.fraunhofer.de), V. Schneider (email: vfocke@cml.fraunhofer.de) and J. Oeffner (email: johannes.oeffner@cml.fraunhofer.de) are with the Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Service, Am Schwarzenberg-Campus 4, 21073 Hamburg, Germany. E. Coccolo (email: coc- coloe@dei.unipd.it), F. Campagnaro (email: campagn1@dei.unipd.it), F. Favaro (email: fedefava86@gmail.com), A. Signori (signoria@dei.unipd.it) and M. Zorzi (email: zorzi@dei.unipd.it) are with the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy. R. Francescon (email: roberto.francescon@wirelessandmore.it), is with Wireless and More srl, 35129 Padova, Italy. F. Steinmetz (email: fabian.steinmetz@tuhh.de) and C. Renner (email: christian.renner@tuhh.de) are with the Institute for Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems, Hamburg University of Technology, Harburger Schloßstraße 28, 21079 Hamburg, Germany. arXiv:2206.11082v1 [cs.RO] 10 Jun 2022