COM DEV Establishes Subsidiary exactEarth to Offer Space-Based AIS Services Beginning in 2010
June 10
COM DEV International Ltd. has established a subsidiary company, exactEarth Ltd., for the purpose of offering advanced space-based Automatic Identification System (AIS-S) data services to competent maritime authorities around the world. exactEarth will launch its first three AIS microsatellites, which are currently under construction in Canada and Europe, and will begin providing its exactAIS(tm) service within the year.
Peter Mabson, President of exactEarth, unveiled the new company and
described its planned service offering at the Nor Shipping Conference in Oslo, an event that annually attracts more than 20,000 members of the global maritime community.
"Our message today is that exactEarth is committed to becoming the
world's premier provider of space-based AIS data, and we are now open for
business," said Mr. Mabson. "We have spent five years developing, testing and validating an advanced AIS-S technology that we believe outperforms any other known system. In the coming months we will begin to roll out our space-based AIS service capability, and will continue our discussions with potential customers and regulatory authorities around the world on how this new advanced capability can help meet their needs in the areas of search and rescue, environmental monitoring, vessel traffic management and maritime security. The exactEarth team of partners that is building this system already spans the globe and we expect to add new partners in the coming months."
exactAIS will require no changes to existing on-board vessel equipment or
procedures, and will provide customers with both standard and custom
interfaces to their existing AIS displays. Over 70,000 ships worldwide are
already equipped with Class A AIS transmitters, but the curvature of the Earth limits reception of the signals to approximately 50 nautical miles for
terrestrial-based receivers. Collection of the transmissions from space will
offer countries unprecedented visibility into the activities of vessels nearing or destined for their shores or travelling in environmentally sensitive areas. The system is highly secure since all links starting from the satellites all the way to the end users are encrypted and the data sets are only provided to authorized competent maritime authorities.
exactEarth is currently deploying the global infrastructure to support
the planned satellites, including multiple Earth stations, a secure data
centre, an operations centre and processing, analysis, archiving and
distribution software. These capabilities will be in place to support the
exactAIS service launch next year and are being deployed in partnership with leading players in Europe, Asia and North America.
exactAIS will achieve a high rate of detection through exactEarth's
patent-pending method of "de-colliding" the transmissions received
simultaneously from Class A AIS transponders on the many thousands of ships that may be within a satellite's 5,000 kilometer field of view at any given time. Furthermore, the polar orbit of the satellites will enable them to
provide coverage over the entire surface of the globe including the polar
regions.
With trial data from selected areas available today, exactEarth plans to
expand exactAIS in phases beginning in the first half of 2010. Subsequent
phases of the service are expected to feature further improvements in update
rates as the exactEarth constellation incorporates additional satellites.
Parent company COM DEV International Ltd. has already invested and
committed over CDN$30 million towards this venture and has allied with
strategic partners in Europe and Asia. COM DEV also has a supporting contract from the Canadian Government to build an advanced demonstration microsatellite called M3MSat (Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Microsatellite) which incorporates a second generation AIS payload and a Low Data Rate (LDR) payload for maritime applications. This satellite is expected to be the most advanced
of its kind when launched in 2011.
