Port of Riga becomes testbed for resilient maritime communications

The Port of Riga will test secure maritime communication technologies that keep working when conventional networks go down, under a Memorandum of Understanding signed between LVR Flote and HARDMODE on October 22, 2026, at the Techritory Forum in Riga.

The deal has no stated investment value and no published timetable. What it does have is a live port, a willing technical services operator, and a pressing regional problem: GNSS interference in the Baltic Sea has disrupted maritime activities in recent years, and ports across the region have been wrestling with what happens when the connectivity their operations depend on degrades or disappears.

That question sits at the centre of the partnership. LVR Flote, which provides technical services and supports infrastructure operations at the Port of Riga, will supply operational expertise and real-world testing conditions. HARDMODE brings the communication technology itself.

"Port technical services have to keep running in everyday operations and in a crisis alike," said Kaspars Ozoliņš, Member of the Board of LVR Flote.

What does the technology actually do?

HARDMODE builds solutions that combine several communication technologies into one system. These include mobile networks, non-terrestrial networks, tactical networks and narrowband networks. The idea is redundancy: if one channel fails, traffic moves to another.

The approach also uses a decentralized network structure. Connected devices exchange information directly with each other, rather than routing everything through a central hub that becomes a single point of failure.

The design keeps a wide cast of port assets connected: equipment, sensors, vehicles, drones and personnel. For a port operator, that coverage matters — a hydrographic survey drone that loses its link, or a navigation sensor that drops offline mid-shift, is not an abstraction. It's a stalled operation.

Where Riga will apply it

The partners plan to test the new technologies in real port operations, not in a lab. Potential applications named for the Port of Riga include:

• Infrastructure monitoring
• Hydrographic surveys
• Maintenance activities
• Navigation safety

Beyond testing, the two companies will explore joint research projects. The partnership also opens a Latvia–Netherlands research channel, reflecting HARDMODE's connections to both countries.

There is an outward-facing element too. The companies plan to create an open testing framework that other technology providers can plug into — developers of monitoring systems, sensors, automation solutions and digital port services. Successful pilot projects could eventually be deployed at other European ports.

Why the timing matters

The Baltic Sea context gives the initiative its urgency. GNSS interference has affected maritime activity in the region for years, and the problem has pushed resilience from an IT footnote to an operational priority for Baltic ports. A communications layer that survives jamming, outages or infrastructure damage is effectively an insurance policy for cargo handling, surveying and navigation safety.

What does this change for shippers and port users in the near term? Very little, and that's the honest answer. The trials haven't started, there's no schedule, and no deployment commitments exist beyond Riga. But the direction is clear: ports are starting to treat resilient connectivity as core infrastructure, and Riga has positioned itself as the place where that gets proven — or fails cheaply — before anyone else adopts it.

The next signal to watch is a concrete trial start date and the first results from live port operations, which will determine whether the open testing framework attracts the wider vendor participation the partners are counting on.