Design of a new integrated system based on e-TMS for improving navigation and communication systems on ships

Abstract

Presently, ships are organic assets to be co-managed at sea and on land together, going beyond the independent maritime structures. In addition, R&D on marine systems technologies is actively under way. Smart ship is cited as one of the key ship technologies responsible for the future along with economic ship routing and unmanned ship concepts. Conventional navigation and communication systems in ships were tools for distance communication. Recently, all the systems handling data and information are integrated into navigation and communication systems. Integrated management of navigation and communication systems on one platform is equivalent to integration of all information about a ship, and crucial for future system scalability and further development of ships. The core technologies on ships such as remote management, accident prevention, and security should be developed based on the navigation and communication systems. However, because of institutional and economic constraints, the navigation and communication systems have not been standardized yet. Too many types of cables are connected to the navigation and communication systems in very complicated ways. In this situation, the design and building costs, maintenance costs, and weight of vessels are rapidly increasing. This paper proposes a novel integrated system based on e-TMS for navigation and communication systems. The e-TMS makes the functions of navigation and communication systems shared with the integrated terminal equipment. This paper also proposes a method of integrating navigation and communication systems and analyzes its economic feasibility for reinforcing the competitiveness of ships. The proposed system outperforms the existing TMS system by 34.3% at shortening the processing time for typical types of alarm data used on ships.