MARINE APPLICATIONS FOR SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS

Although considerable progress has been made in the Marine Transport industry over the recent years, the main impact has been on vessel size and speed. Improved power plants, better navigation systems, advanced loading and unloading systems, and better trained crew members have all contributed to a degree to the advances to date, and as we know much of this advance has been stimulated by foreign competition. During this same time interval the aerospace industry has developed an extensive capability for satellite communications. The 1971 World Administrative Radio Conference for Space allocated two 7.5 MHz bands at approximately 1.5 and 1.6 GHz for maritime satellite use. One of these bands was to be used for satellite-to-ship and the other from ship-to-satellite. Existing C-band allocations were maintained for ground station to satellite transmissions. The availability of the satellite technology and the authoritative assignment of a frequency band stimulated the Maritime Satellite activities and, in particular, set off several activities to investigate potential applications and systems requirements for future operational systems. The result now is that there are two rapidly developing technologies in this country which promise to revolutionize the marine transport industry as we know it today. These are satellite communications and shipboard automation. Although the exact year and month of this transformation cannot be predicted, the application of each of these technologies is, in my opinion, inevitable. This paper reflects the impact of shipboard automation and satellite communications on this change because these two technologies are complementary in terms of economic desirability and technical exploitation.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Presented at the Northern California Section Meeting of SNAME.
• Corporate Authors:

  Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers

  601 Pavonia Avenue
  Jersey City, NJ  United States  07306-2907
• Authors:
  • Hoffman, H
• Publication Date: 0

Media Info

• Pagination: 26 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Communication; Communication systems; Navigational satellites; Satellite communication; Satellite navigation systems; Ships
• Old TRIS Terms: Shipboard communications
• Subject Areas: Marine Transportation; Operations and Traffic Management; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00053931
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: May 7 1974 12:00AM