Multichannel Vessel Tracking Payload for Indonesian University Cubesat: First Result

Vessel traffic monitoring is very important in Indonesia as it is one of the biggest archipelago countries that is in a strategic area. To increase the ship detection area, an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver can be installed on a low earth orbit (LEO) spacecraft, such as cubesat. In this research, a group of student has designed and tested a multichannel AIS receiver payload for cubesat. The receiver is working on AIS Class A and B simultaneously to increase the number of ships detection. This payload was designed in PC104 form factor that suitable in a regular cubesat. The on-ground testing result shows that the number of the detected vessels by this payload is more than 300% compared to an AIS single channel receiver. The furthest ship detected during the test was 38.89 km. However, some attenuators were added to mimic the propagation loss of vessels to space link. The result shows that the payload is capable of receiving the signal over 400 km.