DGNSS Service for Telematic Applications on Inland Waterways

Michael Hoppe, Stefan Bober and Wilfried Rink

Abstract:	Considering the growing interest in a more efficient use of inland waterways a lot of new developments have been undertaken within the European RIS (River Information Services) concept with the following aims: economical use of the existing inland waterways improving the safety of the inland waterways increasing the commercial benefit for the skipper reducing the workload of the skipper One major improvement is the development of an Inland ECDIS (Electronic Chart Display and Information System) and the appropriate standard which is compatible to the existing maritime ECDIS. Also the development of a system for vessel tracking and tracing on inland waterways will lead to an important tool to exchange navigational data between ships and between ships and shore stations. One essential requirement for such new telematic applications is the use of an appropriate radio navigation system, like DGNSS. The use of DGNSS will provide a position with high accuracy, availability and integrity which will significantly enhance the safety for RIS applications. Such a DGNSS should be international standardised and suitable user equipment with a high performance at low costs should be available. In the past few years maritime administrations of quite a large number of countries all over the world have implemented a radiobeacon DGNSS service according to an international standard developed by the International Association of Lighthouse authorities (IALA) to improve safety and efficiency of navigation in their coastal waters. To facilitate the use of new telematic applications for inland navigation, Germany has now expand the existing radiobeacon network at the coast with four additional stations to cover all inland waterways. The article will generally explain the system architecture and will give a report about first experiences of using the DGNSS service as part of a RIS. The benefit of using the DGNSS service together with vessel tracking and tracing will be shown on the basis of the use of the Inland ECDIS and Automatic Identification System (AIS) for inland navigation.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2005) September 13 - 16, 2005 Long Beach Convention Center Long Beach, CA
Pages:	770 - 778
Cite this article:	Hoppe, Michael, Bober, Stefan, Rink, Wilfried, "DGNSS Service for Telematic Applications on Inland Waterways," Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2005), Long Beach, CA, September 2005, pp. 770-778.
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