Study on Precise Positioning for Maritime Transportation Safety

Abstract

Currently, the geographical position of the seafloor and the depth of water as well as the height of bridges, facilities, and the mainmast of vessels are established with the help of tidal data, which, however, are dependent on time and not very accurate. Many vessels determine overhead clearance by a rule of thumb based on their draft for maritime navigation. When navigating, vessels thus do not calculate overhead clearance correctly. This leads to maritime accidents in which the mainmast of the vessels collides with overhead facilities, causing not only copious restoration expenses but also environmental pollution due to oil spill and damage to bridges and electric power supply equipment. In order to avoid such accidents, it is therefore necessary for safe navigation to determine the overhead clearance of vessels in real-time using precise positioning technology while travelling through canals and under bridges. This paper proposes an architecture for secure overhead clearance and shows some results of precise positioning under investigation. It also evaluates a software platform for precise positioning through measurements acquired in the test-bed.