Wojciech Czaplinski

The reliability aspects of the operation of radio navigation systems constitute a crucial element for the safety of maritime navigation.. Technological progress in ship traffic monitoring is achieved through the design of ship systems and shore infrastructure equipped with Automatic Identification System (AIS) devices. One of the issues with AIS operation is the limited availability of the service in the form of data streams with an extended data age recorded on the receiving side. Another problem is the emission and reception by ships of incomplete positional reports without navigational parameters. Such situations render the system operationally unfit in terms of processed information. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the operational characteristics of radio navigation systems and develop tools to monitor the AIS service status on the receiving side. This article presents the development of a model for the availability of an AIS for vessels based on the determined mean time of the occurrence of incomplete navigation parameter values in AIS messages and the results of research in the domain of time and frequency using a mathematical method of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The study results refer to six basic navigation parameters and show a varying service availability factor for the navigation parameters under study, i.e. the latitude (LAT), longitude (LON), speed over ground (SOG), course over ground (COG), heading (HDT), and the rate of turn (ROT). The data recorded by three receiving AIS stations on the Polish coast, i.e. PLKOL, PLSZZ, and PLSWI, were used as a key source of practical knowledge on the limitations of the AIS service availability. The experiment observed interruptions in the regular transmission of data from navigation equipment in the AIS service operational zone. As a result, the functional relationship was described based on the spectral analysis of the frequency of occurrence of times between the service repair (Time To Repair, TTR), and the model was proposed to be applied to the study of other variables. The presented model is a tool that allows for improving the monitoring of vessel traffic in terms of reliability, which directly affects the improvement of maritime traffic safety.

Compass errors can be regarded as a deviation of the vessel from the expected heading. Gyrocompass errors are randomly oscillating in nature, and it is difficult to describe the behaviour of a gyrocompass sufficiently accurately using mathematical relationships. Fibre-optic gyroscopes have no mechanical components, so the variability in their indications has a different nature; the computational processes and inertial sensors used cause certain types of errors. Thus far, compass studies have focused on presenting absolute errors in the time domain. However, compasses exhibit specific characteristics in the frequency domain that affect the amplitude of their deviation. This leads to the issue of identifying the oscillatory spectrum of errors in the operation of such compasses, and how this spectrum is impacted by the dynamic movement of the vessel. We attempt to assess this phenomenon by means of measurements taken on board the training and research vessel M/S NAWIGATOR XXI. The application of a fast Fourier transform allows for calculation of the absolute compass errors in the frequency domain, meaning that the frequency of occurrence of errors can be observed as noise against the background of the useful signal. Our results confirm the value of applying a finite impulse response filter, which is used to filter out noise in the form of absolute compass errors from the useful signal background. The convolution function proposed here considerably extends the possibilities for analysing the signal spectrum in the frequency domain when testing for the accuracy of compass device indications, and enables the elimination of random errors with a low frequency of occurrence..