Coast Stations have traditionally used radio and land line links to connect separate transmit and receive sites to the operations centre.

These links use dedicated land line or microwave circuits and are often very expensive to install and maintain.

Modern technology now allows the linking of equipment using the internet.  Each piece of equipment to be linked/controlled is assigned an IP (internet protocol) address, just like any normal internet enabled computer.

The world-wide nature of the internet offers almost unlimited possibilities for linking.

DSC systems

The TransOceana DSC system is designed to be linked by either RS232 (dedicated traditional style link) or the internet.

The DSC Operator Console program can be set to forward DSC messages to any number of IP addresses.  This enables Operator Consoles to be linked together to provide remote monitoring and/or remote/supervisor control.

The remote Operator Console looks and operates identically to the one at the Coast Radio Station.

Of course, using the internet, this link can be to the next room, 100 km or even 10,000km away. 

For instance, HF DSC stations in a region can be linked together to a central operations centre to provide a coordinated network for monitoring purposes.  The network control centre can see the traffic from all stations.

Coast Radio Stations can also share traffic to increase their coverage and fill in any gaps - this could be across a large region or up and down a coastal area.    

An Operator Console can also be configured to enable sharing of radio assets between various organisations.  Receivers which are decoding message traffic can be filtered to send, say Coast Guard SAR traffic to one console and port control to other consoles.   

This same configuration can be used to transmit messages from various agencies, all using common equipment.  The outgoing messages will appear to a vessel as having come from that agency, with different MMSIs – so they look like separate stations.

Radio systems

Voice Over IP (VOIP) technology has now matured to the point where it can be used to link VHF and MF/HF radio systems.

The Barrett 2050 radio is able to be remote controlled over the internet using VOIP.  The system allows the radio to be remote controlled using a standard 2050 radio front panel.

Similarly, the Tait TB8100 VHF system can be remote controlled using the TransOceana radio control system.

This linking technology allows a complete unmanned remote controlled GMDSS station to be installed for quote reasonable cost.  Using the internet, the station can be remote controlled from quite literally anywhere...even from a laptop over WIFI.......we haven't developed an iPad application....yet....

Operational issues

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