DOCKINGASSIST: IMPROVED PORT EFFICIENCY AND SAFETY USING A NOVEL WIRELESS NETWORK AND DIFFERENTIAL GLOBAL NAVIGATION SATELLITE SYSTEM PROVIDING ENHANCED VESSEL NAVIGATION

Good accuracy for positioning ships in harbors and docks is required to assist ship maneuvering resulting in evident enhancements in safety and management issues, and consequently also achieving reductions in fuel, CO2 emissions, and lower environmental impact within ports. Accuracies at centimeter level are needed in these scenarios in order to implement a functional and reliable system. The GPS (Global Positioning System) signals, developed by the army of USA, provide an accuracy of 5-10 meters. Galileo, the European GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) -- which is expected to be full operative in 2014-2015 -- will offer better coverage and more reliable service around Europe (as it is being developed for civilian purposes), but the accuracy will be similar to GPS. Using both constellations, GPS and Galileo, is expected to increase accuracy up to 2-3 meters. At the moment in Europe, there exists an alternative for increasing the accuracy of the GPS by means of EGNOS, a constellation of 3 geostationary satellites, achieving an accuracy of 1-3 meters. This accuracy is not enough and, in addition, these satellites are not always visible in Northern Europe. Another technique to improve the accuracy of the GNSS systems is the Differential GPS (DGPS) which uses a fixed GPS reference station to augment the information available from the satellites (identifying certain errors), and transmitting the correction signals by radio (normally around 300 KHz, or FM) to the receiver. Again, the accuracy is not sufficient, and such a system requires system configuration, antenna equipment, maintenance and consumes a lot of power. A need has been identified in the marine sector in docking systems for harbors, as well as in oil and gas tankers, where centimeter accuracy is required for positioning containers ships, bulk carriers, and other large vessels. There are some alternatives for increasing the accuracy of the current GNSS but are far from providing the centimeter-range accuracy required.

The aim of the project is to develop a low cost, accurate ship location system for harbors and ports based on a new approach for using GNSS with increasing accuracy down to less than 10 cm. This new technique will allow for the implementation of a system compatible with GPS and Galileo constellations, which will be low cost, and easy to install and maintain. The commercial objective of the project is to offer a low cost ship positioning system for harbors in a relatively short time, less than 3 years. The consortium is opened to any SME interested on contributing during the development and exploitation of the results such as manufacturers of marine surveying instruments, positioning solutions supplier, and SMEs related to ship management in harbors.

Wireless comunications specially WIMAX
WIMAX
Management of Harbours and ports
Manufactures of marine surveying and monitoring instrumentation.
Nautical navigation software
Port Authorities
Maritime Technologies

3 RTD PERFORMERS - Presitigious Research Centres from Finland and Spain.

5 Technical SME Participants - from Israel, Denmark, Spain, UK and Poland.