AN AFFORDABLE SOLUTION TO THE SAT-AIS ESA INITIATIVE FOR MARITIME SURVEILLANCE

摘要

SAT-AIS is an EMSA (European Maritime Safety Agency) and ESA initiative for a European space system thatwill provide maritime traffic data to institutional organisations and other entities, based on detection of ship AISsignals. Maritime Surveillance increasingly relies on space systems to combine different missions such asobservation (radar, optical), AIS message capture, Search and Rescue data collection and signal intelligence. Thesemeans are complementary and allow coverage of cooperative (AIS) and non-cooperative vessels (not emitting AIS).Although the AIS communication system protocol was not originally designed for capture from space, thisopportunity is very promising and provides a good situational awareness of vessels at a consistent scale with othersensors. The space-based AIS mission, as part of the maritime surveillance capabilities will offer a global situationawareness, a rapid access to worldwide information with short time data refreshing capabilities.Space-based AIS services can support commercial shipping, environmental and security issues of maritimesurveillance, extending the coastal services to high seas with a global view, and answer to users needs such asMaritime Security, Environment and Safety, Fleet management. Such system design, performances and servicescapabilities will be addressed in the scope of phase B1 study led by ESA in 2011. Astrium has proposed aninnovative approach to define an affordable operational system based on a LEO constellation of simple lightsatellites meeting high performances and deployed with an optimized launch strategy. This paper presents thedefinition and performances of a new generation of SAT-AIS. Space segment, ground segment and concept ofoperations will be described as key components optimized for a cost effective end-to-end solution compatible ofSAT-AIS programme objectives