The Faculty of Maritime Studies, University of Rijeka, Croatia, manages the European Union (EU) project “Avoiding Collisions at Sea” (ACTs). The project is funded by the European programme “Leonardo da Vinci”. Other maritime education and training institutions participating in this project come from Great Britain, Spain, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Turkey. The purpose of this research was to identify skill gaps in knowledge and teaching of COLREGs (International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea 1972 - Rules) for nautical Bachelor of Science (BSc) students and experienced deck officers. The analysis of the research on marine accidents has identified vessel collisions as one of the most frequent types of accidents. Further research showed that human error and misinterpretation of the Rules are the most frequent reasons for vessel collisions. Using a questionnaire, nautical students/navigating cadets and navigating officers' understanding of the Rules was tested. The results showed skill gaps in understanding of some parts of the COLREGs due to wrong interpretation and application of the Rules. The authors claim that it is possible to improve the professional competence of navigating officers by applying proper learning methods using real-life scenarios and e-learning.

The notion of the earth as a perfect sphere has served navigators quite well over the centuries and it continues to provide a basis for instruction and practical navigation. Aside from the fact that modern navigators employ refined models of the earth such as the WGS84 ellipsoid, which together with satellite positioning gives unprecedented positioning accuracy, the question arises as to just how good are the spherical results for distance when compared to the results for distance obtained from the spheroidal model. In this document a comparison is made of great circle distance (GCD) on the sphere with great ellipse distance (GED) on the spheroid. This comparison is then repeated for rhumbline distances. In each case it is concluded that the difference in using the sphere when compared to the spheroid is near 0·5%.

In this paper, the Auto-Regressive Moving-Averaging (ARMA) neural networks (NNs) will be incorporated for predicting the differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) pseudorange correction (PRC) information. The neural network is employed to realize the time-varying ARMA implementation. Online training for real-time prediction of the PRC enhances the continuity of service on the differential correction signals and therefore improves the positioning accuracy. When the PRC signal is lost, the ARMA neural network predicted PRC would temporarily provide correction data with very good accuracy. Simulation is conducted for evaluating the ARMA NN based DGPS PRC prediction accuracy. A comparative performance study based on two types of ARMA neural networks, i.e. Back-propagation Neural Network (BPNN) and General Regression Neural Network (GRNN), will be provided.

Air traffic in Europe is increasing at a rapid rate and traffic patterns no longer display pronounced daily peaks but instead exhibit peak spreading. Airspace capacity planning can no longer be for the peak period but must consider the whole day. En route airspace capacity in the high density European air traffic network is determined by controller workload. Controller workload is primarily affected by the features of the air traffic and ATC sector. This paper considers the air traffic and ATC sector factors that affect controller workload throughout the whole day. A simulation study using the widely used Reorganized ATC Mathematical Simulator (RAMS) model of air traffic controller workload is conducted for the Central European Air Traffic Services (CEATS) Upper Area Control Centre region of Europe. A cross-sectional time series analysis of the simulation output is conducted with corrections for temporal autocorrelation in the data. The results indicate that a subset of traffic and sector variables and their parameter estimates can be used to predict controller workload in any sector of the CEATS region in any given hour.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic, digital contact-tracing applications (apps) have been at the centre of attention as a digital tool to enable citizens to monitor their social distancing, which appears to be one of the leading practices for mitigating the spread of airborne infectious diseases. Many countries have been working towards developing suitable digital contact-tracing apps to allow the measurement of the physical distance between citizens and to alert them when contact with an infected individual has occurred. However, the adoption of digital contact-tracing apps has faced several challenges so far, including interoperability between mobile devices and users’ privacy concerns. There is a need to reach a trade-off between the achievable technical performance of new technology, false-positive rates, and social and behavioural factors. This paper reviews a wide range of factors and classifies them into three categories of technical, epidemiological and social ones, and incorporates these into a compact mathematical model. The paper evaluates the effectiveness of digital contact-tracing apps based on received signal strength measurements. The results highlight the limitations, potential and challenges of the adoption of digital contact-tracing apps.

The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) is an autonomous and independent navigational system being developed by India. IRNSS will provide position, navigation and timing services for national applications. To improve accuracy, it can be augmented using GPS and pseudolites (pseudo-satellites). In this paper, the effect on DOP (Dilution of Precision) due to augmentation of the proposed constellation of IRNSS with pseudolites is investigated. GDOP is reduced to 1·75 (max) from 3·63 (max) due to augmentation of IRNSS with two airport pseudolites (APLs). Due to augmentation of IRNSS with GPS, GDOP is reduced to 2·4 (max). When IRNSS is augmented with an APL as well as with GPS, GDOP is further decreased to 1·65 (max). The regional effect on DOP due to IRNSS is also investigated at different locations in the Indian region.

Maintaining good positioning performance has always been a challenging task for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) applications in partially obstructed environments. A method that can optimise positioning performance in harsh environments is proposed. Using a carrier double-difference (DD) model, the influence of the satellite-pair geometry on the correlation among different equations has been researched. This addresses the critical relationship between DD equations and its ill-posedness. From analysing the collected multi-constellation observations, a strong correlation between the condition number and the positioning standard deviation is detected as the correlation coefficient is larger than 0·92. Based on this finding, a new method for determining the reference satellites by using the minimum condition number rather than the maximum elevation is proposed. This reduces the ill-posedness of the co-factor matrix, which improves the single-epoch positioning solution with a fixed DD ambiguity. Finally, evaluation trials are carried out by masking some satellites to simulate common satellite obstruction scenarios including azimuth shielding, elevation shielding and strip shielding. Results indicate the proposed approach improves the positioning stability with multi-constellation satellites notably in harsh environments.

The regional part of the current BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) consists of five Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites, five Inclined Geosynchronous Satellite Orbit (IGSO) satellites and four Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites. We examined three algorithms for BDS velocity estimation. In addition, the performance of velocity estimation using different BDS satellite combinations was analysed. Static tests demonstrated that velocity precision using Raw Doppler (RD) measurements was of the order of centimetres per second, whereas the carrier-phase-Derived Doppler (DD) measurements and Time-Differenced Carrier Phase (TDCP) method provided accuracies of the order of millimetres per second. Because of the irregularity of the satellites' distribution, three peaks exist on the north component in the 24-hour velocity series. Besides, the GEO satellites contribute significantly in velocity estimation and the satellites' geometry condition seriously declined when excluding GEO satellites. In kinematic tests, the root mean square of the velocity error derived by DD and TDCP both attained the centimetre per second level. Moreover, the precision of velocity determination with these three methods was degraded by the sudden acceleration of the vehicle.

1. INTRODUCTION. The Collision Regulations are designed to assist navigators to avoid collisions at sea. However, because of their qualitative nature it has been proposed that the Regulations should be supplemented by quantitative references to give practical meaning to concepts like ‘safe’ passing distance, ‘early’ action, etc. (Cockcroft and Lameijer, 1982). The problem of interpretation and quantification of the Regulations has been analysed in a recent paper by Wu (1984), considering in particular the concepts of ‘substantial’ action to avoid a collision, and the distance of ‘last-minute’ action in turning to avoid a collision. These analyses, along with many others, are concerned with developing prescriptive guidelines for mariners, in accordance with the Regulations.

Navigational accidents (collisions and groundings) account for approximately 85% of mari-time accidents, and consequence estimation for such accidents is essential for both emergency resource allocation when such accidents occur and for risk management in the framework of a formal safety assessment. As the traditional Bayesian network requires expert judgement to develop the graphical structure, this paper proposes a mutual information-based Bayesian network method to reduce the requirement for expert judgements. The central premise of the proposed Bayesian network method involves calculating mutual information to obtain the quantitative element among multiple influencing factors. Seven-hundred and ninety-seven historical navigational accident records from 2006 to 2013 were used to validate the methodology. It is anticipated the model will provide a practical and reasonable method for consequence estimation of navigational accidents.

In view of the shortcomings of existing satellite navigation systems in deep-space performance, candidate architectures which utilise libration point orbits in the Earth-Moon system are proposed to create an autonomous satellite navigation system for lunar missions. Three candidate constellations are systematically studied in order to achieve continuous global coverage for lunar orbits: the Earth-Moon L1,2 two-satellite constellation, the Earth-Moon L2,4,5 three-satellite constellation and the Earth-Moon L1,2,4,5 four-satellite constellation. After a thorough search for possible configurations, the latter two constellations are found to be the simplest feasible architectures for lunar navigation. Finally, an autonomous orbit determination simulation is performed to verify the autonomy of the system and two optimal configurations are obtained in a comprehensive consideration of coverage and autonomous orbit determination performance.

Tracking dynamics on the GPS signal is still a big challenge to the receiver designer as the operating conditions are becoming more volatile. Optimizing the stand-alone system for dynamics generally degrades the accuracy of measurements. Therefore, an inertial navigation system (INS) is integrated with GPS to address this issue. Doppler derived from INS can be used to aid the carrier tracking loop for improving the performance under dynamic conditions. However, the derived doppler does not truly reflect the GPS signal doppler due to errors in inertial sensors. As the tracking loop bandwidth is reduced significantly in ultra-tightly integrated systems, any offsets in the aiding doppler creates undesired correlations in the tracking loop resulting in sub-optimal performance of the loop. The paper addresses this issue and also provides a mitigating mechanism to reduce the effects of incorrect estimates of the doppler. It is shown that doppler offsets resulting in a bias in the tracking loop can be appropriately modelled and removed. Mathematical algorithms pertaining to this are provided and the results are summarized. Simulations show that the bias due to aiding doppler offsets could be effectively addressed by appropriate modelling.

Safety is a crucial issue in densely sailed waterways. Traffic guidance systems (VTS) have proven to be valuable in this respect. The effectiveness of current systems and the benefits for improvements in navigation are addressed in this paper. Relevant incidents are analysed with a risk assessment tool (Accident Sequence Precursor method) developed for complex system analyses. The method is capable of drawing conclusions on a high level: strategic and tactic events and the human errors associated with the navigator's task cycle. Changes in current VTS systems will not likely improve safety records in dense areas. Improvements might best be achieved by reducing or eliminating the human factor in incident sequences.

We describe an integrated navigation system based on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), an Inertial Navigation System (INS) and terrestrial ranging technologies that can support accurate and seamless indoor-outdoor positioning. To overcome severe multipath disturbance in indoor environments, Locata technology is used in this navigation system. Such a “Locata-augmented” navigation system can operate in different positioning modes in both indoor and outdoor environments. In environments where GNSS is unavailable, e.g. indoors, the proposed system is designed to operate in the Locata/INS “loosely-integrated” mode. On the other hand, in outdoor environments, all GNSS, Locata and INS measurements are available, and all useful information can be fused via a decentralised Federated Kalman filter. To evaluate the proposed system for seamless indoor-outdoor positioning, an indoor-outdoor test was conducted at a metal-clad warehouse. The test results confirmed that the proposed navigation system can provide continuous and reliable position and attitude solutions, with the positioning accuracy being better than five centimetres.

Birds can accurately navigate over hundreds to thousands of kilometres, and use celestial and magnetic compass senses to orient their flight. How birds determine their location in order to select the correct homeward bearing (map sense) remains controversial, and has been attributed to their olfactory or magnetic senses. Pigeons can hear infrasound down to 0·05 Hz, and an acoustic avian map is proposed consisting of infrasonic cues radiated from steep-sided topographic features. The source of these infrasonic signals is microseisms continuously generated by interfering oceanic waves. Atmospheric processes affecting the infrasonic map cues can explain perplexing experimental results from pigeon releases. Moreover, four recent disrupted pigeon races in Europe and the north-eastern USA intersected infrasonic shock waves from the Concorde supersonic transport. Having an acoustic map might also allow clock-shifted birds to test their homeward progress and select between their magnetic and solar compasses.

Integer ambiguity resolution is able to improve positioning accuracy and reduce convergence time in Precise Point Positioning (PPP). Although significantly improved horizontal positioning accuracy has been demonstrated, the height solution improvement is found to be less significant, and improving this requires further investigation. In this paper, a troposphere constraint method using precise troposphere corrections is proposed to improve the PPP ambiguity-resolved height solution. This is different from the conventional approach that typically applies meteorological data to calculate the a priori troposphere delay and estimates the residual troposphere delay. The effects of the troposphere delay on PPP ambiguity-resolved height solutions are first studied. Numerical analysis is conducted to ambiguity-resolved positioning results based on the decoupled clock model and hourly Global Positioning System (GPS) observations from a Canadian PPP-inferred troposphere precipitable water vapour system. The results show that by using the proposed method the PPP ambiguity-resolved height accuracy can be further improved to 3·86 cm compared to 5·32 cm using the conventional approach.

Urban positioning using the Global Positioning System (GPS) is challenging because of multipath. Urban canyons limit open sky visibility, and cause signal reflection and diffraction, resulting in significant satellite range measurement errors. The investigations reported here have been carried out in a French project called Inturb (an acronym derived from integrity and urban positioning). So far, the project has had two phases: first, a simple Three-Dimensional (3D) geometrical city modelling, called “Urban Trench”, has been developed and engineered manually from data sets collected in different cities. Positioning improvement in terms of accuracy was quantified where the model could be applied. Second, this modelling has been automated, based on the standard national BD Topo ® map database for France, with promising results. This geometrical modelling makes it possible to distinguish between line-of-sight satellite signals and those from non-line-of-sight. The latter, apparently bona fide, signals are caused by strong reflections, usually from buildings with a lot of steel and glass in their construction. A correction of the pseudo-range measurements of the latter is also computed and applied in the position estimator. Positioning accuracy is improved, whilst availability is kept at its maximum. In the study both manual and automatic 3D models are used in extensive experimental campaigns. Results are: first, the possibility to cover entirely any urban area in the country; second, the reduction of the median error in 3D by more than 50% on data collected in Nantes, Paris and Toulouse for a total duration of nearly ten hours; third, the compliance with standards used in most embedded maps and geographical information systems, including an assessment of the trade-off between the model simplicity and the positioning improvement.

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver on board the main satellite of the TianTuo-3 constellation, LvLiang-1, is a new generation of AIS receiver. Having partly solved the signal conflict problems and with larger coverage over the ground, the AIS receiver on board TianTuo-3 greatly improves the signal detection ability. The data received by the AIS receiver during the TianTuo-3 debugging stage is employed for detailed analysis in this paper. Results include: TianTuo-3 implements four-frequency detection at the same time, and a time-flag is inserted into the received AIS data, a small portion of Class A vessels (at least 1480) have been equipped with AIS sending the long range AIS broadcast message with two new frequency channels and the hourly averaged count of the message received by TianTuo-3’s AIS is between 1500 ~ 2500. This AIS receiver is capable of real-time tracking a single vessel. In conclusion, the TianTuo-3 space-based AIS receiver is capable of continuously receiving AIS messages sent by global maritime vessels.

Arctic shipping routes attract more and more attention because of the increasing possibility to build commercial shipping routes which connect East Asia and Western Europe. To build profitable commercial shipping routes, shipping companies should study many issues about the Arctic carefully since it is a new and unfamiliar frontier. To find out key factors influencing the building of Arctic shipping routes, the authors applied the fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model in this study. Based on the AHP experts’ questionnaires, we applied the fuzzy AHP model to analyse the opinions of respondents. This article presents the results of an empirical survey conducted among shipping companies and academic researchers with ship captain experience to explore their attitudes toward the building of Arctic shipping routes. The findings showed that: ‘Safety and risk’ is the most important aspect affecting the building of Arctic shipping routes and in order of relative importance, the top six critical assessment factors are ‘navigation safety and risk analysis,’ ‘governance and cooperation,’ ‘navigation information,’ ‘cargo sources,’ ‘cost,’ and ‘navigator ability,’ respectively.

The trajectory tracking of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) is an important research topic. However, in the traditional research into AUV trajectory tracking control, the AUV often follows human-set trajectories without obstacles, and trajectory planning and tracking are separated. Focusing on this separation, a trajectory re-planning controller based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) is designed and added into the trajectory tracking controller to form a new control system. Firstly, an obstacle avoidance function is set up for the design of an MPC trajectory re-planning controller, so that the re-planned trajectory produced by the re-planning controller can avoid obstacles. Then, the tracking controller in the MPC receives the re-planned trajectory and obtains the optimal tracking control law after calculating the object function with a Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) optimisation algorithm. Lastly, in a backstepping algorithm, the speed jump can be sharp while the MPC tracking controller can solve the speed jump problem. Simulation results of different obstacles and trajectories demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed MPC trajectory re-planning tracking control algorithm for AUVs.