Page 71: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (March 1999)

Vessel I.D. System Aids Vessel Safety (Continued from page 50) along its coast. Finland will follow with its own network of base stations before the end of 2001. Similarly, the Maritime

Administrations of Finland and Sweden have encouraged the largest shipowners to invest in AIS equipment.

As the results are so successful today, the two countries are working to have the International Telecommunication

Union (ITU) standard accepted by IMO as a compulsory requirement within the

SOLAS convention. It should take effect in 2002 for cargo vessels and pas- senger vessels over 300 grt.

Interest in and work in AIS has inten- sified just in the past eight months, as

ITU announced the new standards for

AIS. The AIS technology used in this project is based originally on the work of a Swedish manufacturer, GP&C, which worked with VTT in Finland.

The System

The system requires a VHF channel of its own to operate, and ITU has already decided to allocate two VHF channels worldwide to AIS applications. As a supplement, some countries evidently plan to use Inmarsat for data transmis- sion.

Although an AIS set can be configured specially as a base station or a mobile station, data communication is totally independent of an onshore base station network. A data link is set up immedi- ately between two or more AIS devices once they are within radio range of each other, whether ship-to-ship or ship-to- shore. This facilitates identification on the open ocean reportedly as easily as within range of an onshore base station.

The technology that permits this self- organizing network is known as SOTD-

MA, or Self-Organized Time Division

Multiple Access.

Three companies currently manufac- ture AIS equipment. The project under- way in Finland uses the R3 AIS by

Swedish manufacturer GP&C. The instrument consists of a GPS receiver, processor components and a VHF radio.

The Finnish Maritime Administration, together with VTT Manufacturing

Technology, has taken part in the EU- funded Poseidon project, within the framework of which a number of AIS sets have been installed and type of ser- vices based on the system have been developed.

The system was tested onboard the passenger ferries Viking Mariella and

Silja Serenade, as well as onboard some

FMA service ferries.

Until final international standards are agreed, it is impossible to accurately list all possibilities for the system.

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Circle 74 on Reader Service Card

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March, 1999 Circle 263 on Reader Service Card Circle 286 on Reader Service Card 71