Transmission evaluation of Ship-borne Automatic Identification System (AIS) in congested waterways

AIS (ship-borne automatic identification system) is a system that enables a ship to get information about encountered ships, such as their position, course, speed, name etc. automatically by VHF radio transmission. The system is expected to contribute the improvement of marine traffic control and safety. In some congested waterways overloaded/conflicted transmission of AIS is a potential problem in the planning stage. We have developed a simulator that simulates AIS communication for real or simulated marine traffic flow considering the movement of each ship. AIS communication is evaluated under various AIS transmitting conditions and for various aspects using thus developed AIS simulator.