A study on AIS positional error analysis and transmission frequency requirements of attitude data for future vessel monitoring

Abstract Automatic Identification System (AIS) provides estimated position time along with reception time and a time stamp at the receiving station; however, the exact position estimation time remains unidentified. Therefore, this study examines the extent of positional error when using current AIS reception time. As a result, a maximum positional error of 116.9 m was observed between AIS and RTK-GPS (Real-Time Kinematic GPS). Subsequent time correction reduced this error to less than 10 m, with the product of ship speed and correction time nearly matching the error pre-correction. Consequently, it was concluded that transmitting position estimation time is essential for maintaining the reliability of Position Accuracy transmitted by AIS or VHF Data Exchange System (VDES). Furthermore, VDES may possess the communication capacity to transmit and receive vessel attitude data. Therefore, to assess the required transmission frequency, the data transmission period of roll and pitch attitude data was analysed through the mutual correlation of acceleration and angular velocity. The results indicated that the correlation coefficient for each axis exceeded 0.65 at frequencies of 0.5 Hz or higher.