A European hybrid high performance Satellite-AIS system

Abstract

Maritime surveillance needs to be improved in order to provide a worldwide, independent of national borders, continuous, systematic and reliable maritime security and safety system for the benefits of end users: EU agencies, Customs, Coast Guard, Navies, Private Ventures, ... The AIS (Automatic Identification System) is an existing VHF anti collision maritime system. It is used today as a tracking system for ships. As of today, in application of SOLAS Convention Chapter V/19, all SOLAS ships worldwide above 300 tons in international voyages, passenger ships, and other cargos ships above 500 tons, have to carry an active Class A (12.5 watts) AIS transmitter/receiver. EU fishing vessels above 15m will also have to be equipped. Nowadays more than 70 000 vessels in the world are equipped with AIS class A equipment, and the estimated forecast in the future vary from 110 000 to 150 000 ships. Capturing the AIS signals from a satellite will enable to receive navigation information from ships (such as position, heading, speed, destination...), and thus will enable to enhance maritime surveillance capacities. Such system will provide added value services for the following different domains: Fleet management; Environmental; Maritime safety; Maritime security; Law enforcement & Piracy. First generation of SAT-AIS system delivers today SAT-AIS data with basic Quality of Service (main limitation being due to the issue of SAT-AIS signals collision). Even by multiplying the number of satellites, the ships detection probability of such system will remain low. There are fortunately 2 approaches to improve the QoS (Quality of Service) of AIS data collection from space, in term of ships detection capacities: The first one is to introduce a technical breakthrough in the space based AIS processing concept, thus enabling to change the order of magnitude of the QoS in dense maritime areas. Thales Alenia Space has developed such concept, enabling the system to be totally seamless (no impact on current ship AIS hardware) for the maritime community; The second one, is the introduction of a 3rd VHF frequency (not regulated today), dedicated to the space based AIS, and tuned (in term of protocol) in order also to dramatically improve the QoS. The paper will analyse how those two approaches really enable to offer High Quality of Service for the maritime community, what are their limitation, and what are the impact in term of implementation, usage and regulation. This paper will also analyse how a combination of medium performance commercial SAT-AIS system and high performance institutional SAT-AIS system can dramatically improve the EU maritime surveillance capacities.