A new modular and open concept for the maritime Integrated PNT System

Kurzfassung

A high-level user need recognized by the IMO in MSC85/26 Annex 20 is the resilient provision of position, navigation, and time data (PNT) to ship-side applications such as Automatic Identification System (AIS), Electronic Chart Display Information System (ECDIS), and Integrated Navigation System (INS). Resilience is the ability of the PNT system to detect and compensate external and internal sources of disturbances, malfunction and breakdowns in parts of the system. This shall be achieved without loss of PNT data provision and preferably without degradation of their performance. Within this context a modular, scalable and open concept for a maritime Integrated PNT system is under development to enable the stepwise fulfillment of such user needs as e.g. improvement of reliability, indication of reliability and automatic assessment of all navigation relevant data. Furthermore the proposed PNT concept supports the exploitation of modernization processes in radio navigation systems (space-based and terrestrial), ship-side sensors and shore-side services. The PNT system has to be considered as an open framework supporting the usage of any sensors, services and data sources improving the accuracy or assessing the integrity of provided PNT data and applied components. Within the presentation we describe the crossover from the classical approach operating with stand-alone equipment aboard a vessel to a modular PNT unit approach capable to work in stand-alone mode too as well as specific CCRS module of the Integrated Navigation System. It consist the introduction into the concept for an on-board maritime PNT module as well as a discussion of the enhanced opportunities for integrity monitoring, which are enabled by a PNT module. This work is strongly driven by activities of the e-navigation PNT working group of the IALA.