With a large national fleet of small fishing and other commercial boats, country x wanted to establish a basic core identification and tracking capability for all vessels operating across its entire eez (exclusive economic zone) at minimal cost.
Most of the vessels were very small, operating from a wide range of ports spread across a long coast line, much of which was not suitable for the installation of traditional infrastructure. Through a local partner, SRT has been able to assist in the specification of the world’s lowest cost vessel tracking system. The system makes use of a number of individual technology and product elements which are seamlessly fused to enable authorities to reliably track any vessel across their entire EEZ.
Vessels will be fitted with a specialist AIS transceiver whose identity transmissions will be received by shore and satellite based receivers. Received data is processed by a central database from which multiple users can access and view real time and historical data on intelligent 2D and 3D displays.
Vessel Transceivers
All vessels will be fitted with an SAT-Trak enabled AIS I100 IDENTIFIER with VDR functionality. This specialist CSTDMA AIS
transceiver was specifically designed for ultra low cost vessel tracking without compromising on reliability and compliance with the ITU AIS communication protocol to ensure full interoperability with all AIS devices and systems. An internal battery provides over 5 days of continuous operation between charges, or, where appropriate it can be connected to a vessel power supply with the battery becoming a back-up power source. This ensures constant uninterrupted transmissions. Each Identifier can be easily and securely installed on any vessel with sophisticated anti-tamper features ensuring complete integrity and no unauthorised swapping between vessels. The internal VDR continuously and securely records a rolling record of the last 2 month’s movements of the vessel and provides authorities
with a back up activity reference if required.
Transmission Reception
The nature of the coast line and tight budget meant that it was not practical nor commercially viable to cover the entire coast with AIS receivers. Additional since AIS is a VHF radio technology and thus range is line of sight, the range of a coast based AIS receiver is typically up to 50 nautical miles. Therefore, the system will see SRT AIS COAST STATIONS installed in all ports where there is easy access to power and internet connectivity. This will provide intensive terrestrial
reception coverage in areas where there is a high density of vessel traffic. Received data will be securely streamed back to the central database. Outside of the detection area of the terrestrial coast station network, the exact Earth AIS satellite
network will receive an identity and position report from each vessel every 2 to 4 hours and stream this data directly into the central database. This satellite detection of AIS Class B type transmissions from the Identifier is only made possible by SAT-Trak technology.
Database & Display
All transmissions from the vessel transceivers across the entire EEZ are aggregated in real time in the GeoVS HUB data base located in country. The GeoVS HUB database is a sophisticated database solution which manages and stores all received data in real time. Up to 50 years of data can be stored providing a valuable national repository of maritime activity data. Data stored in the GeoVS HUB can be accessed by any authorised PC running the GeoVS VIEWER application. All vessel data, real time and historical, can be instantly viewed in 2D chart overlay or dynamic 3D digital reality formats. Information able to be displayed is almost limitless, but includes pictures of the boat and its owner/operator and contact details, its type, size, home port, license information, and much more.
This system delivered a basic vessel tracking system at minimal cost to the national authority, installed, configured and maintained by SRT’s local partner. However, although the initial system provides a basic level of functionality, the core technology enables easy upgrades with additional functionality in the future without further hardware investments, thus ensuring that the national authority can grow its EEZ maritime domain awareness program.
The customer benefited from securing a reliable vessel tracking system for its entire national fleet at a very low cost using the IMO endorsed AIS technology.
A range of products for this scenario
AIS Class B Transponder – The world’s lowest cost, secure, AIS vessel tracking solution
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