Marine traffic engineering is defined as the study of marine traffic and the application of such studies to improvements in navigation facilities and traffic regulation. The authors review recent Japanese work in this field.

Since the mountainous terrain of Japan hindered the development of road transport, goods have mainly been sent by ship, from the earliest times until the end of the last century. The rapid economic recovery of Japan after the Second World War owes much to the industrial belt along the coast which may be called the ‘Water Megalopolis’, with more than 70 million inhabitants. Shipping provides the greater part of both interzonal and international transport and consequently there is severe traffic congestion, accentuated by the presence of more than 200,000 fishing vessels.

Gradual fault detection is always an important issue in integrated navigation systems, and the gradual fault is the most difficult fault to detect. To detect gradual faults in a timely and precise manner in integrated navigation systems, the statistical concepts of the normalised residual mean and the sum of absolute residuals are introduced according to the characteristics of gradual system failure in this paper. The applicability of the improved residual χ2 detection method is discussed. Then, the gradual fault detection program based on the improved residual χ2 detection method is designed with the criterion of normalised residual mean and the sum of absolute residual. The simulation results and vehicle tests show that: 1) The residual of the failed sub-system can be calculated accurately with the improved residual χ2 detection method, which has strong applicability in gradual fault detection; 2) The gradual fault can be detected in a short time by using the normalised residual mean and the sum of absolute residual.

The accurate location of a vehicle in the road is one of the most important challenges in the automotive field. The need for accurate positioning affects several in-vehicle systems like navigators, lane departure warning systems, collision warning and other related sectors such as digital cartography suppliers. The aim of this paper is to evaluate high precision positioning systems that are able to supply an on-the-centimetre accuracy source to develop on-the-lane positioning systems and to be used in future applications as an information source for autonomous vehicles that circulate at high speeds on public roads. In this paper we have performed some on-road experiments, testing several GPS-based systems: Autonomous GPS; RTK Differential GPS with a proprietary GPS base station; RTK Differential GPS connected to the public GPS base station network of the National Geographic Institute of Spain via vehicle-to-infrastructure GPRS communications; and GPS combination with inertial measurement systems (INS) for position accuracy maintenance in degraded satellite signal reception areas. In these tests we show the validity and the comparison of these positioning systems, allowing us to navigate, in some cases, on public roads at speeds near 120 km/h and up to 100 km from the start position without any significant accuracy reduction.

A new ICAO Policy on Airborne Collision Avoidance Systems is needed, which recognizes it to be an integrated part of the air traffic management system's safety defences; and that should be fully included in hazard analyses for the total system's design safety targets.

In 1935, Van Veen, Chief Engineer of the Dutch Waterstaat, wrote about some giant sandwaves which he had recorded on the Varne Bank and the Falls in the Straits of Dover. They were up to 40 feet high from trough to crest, and were found at either end of the banks. Although these dimensions seemed somewhat unusual at the time, such waves had been known to exist since the end of the last century, when Osborne Reynolds, experimenting in a model tank, discovered in 1899 that tidal streams could produce what he called ‘very large current ripples, possibly 7 or 8 feet high and 80 to 100 feet apart.’ In 1901, Vaughan Cornish described having seen giant ripples of that order in several localities, among them the North Goodwin Sands.

Giant waves are by no means rare. Early in 1953, H.M.S. Challenger obtained a trace on the Cross Sands, east of Lowestoft, on which several waves between 25 and 30 feet high were recorded in about 20 fathoms of water. During the summer of 1953, one of H.M. survey vessels recorded waves up to 50 feet high in a depth of water above the crests of about 12 fathoms on a sandbank north of Perim Island in the Red Sea.

This paper first investigates the influencing factors of between-receiver Differential Inter-System Bias (DISB) between overlapping frequencies of the Global Positioning System (GPS), Galileo and the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS). It was found that the receiver reboot and the type of observations may have an impact on DISBs. The impact of receiver firmware upgrades and the activation of anti-multipath filters are also investigated and some new results are presented. Then a performance evaluation is presented of tightly combined relative positioning for a short baseline with GPS/Galileo/QZSS L1-E1-L1/L5-E5a-L5 observations with the current constellations, in which the recently launched Galileo and QZSS satellites will also be included. It is demonstrated that when DISBs are a priori calibrated and corrected, the tightly combined model can deliver a much higher empirical ambiguity resolution success rate and positioning accuracy with respect to the classical loosely combined model, especially under environments where the observed satellites for each system are limited and only single-frequency observations are available. The ambiguity dilution of precision, bootstrapping success rate, and ratio values are analysed to illustrate the benefits of the tightly combined model as well.

The container liner shipping industry has stepped into an era of international strategic alliances. Important to these liner alliances is the sharing and allocation of container slots between its member carriers. This paper optimises planning of container ship capacity sharing and co-allocation under a co-charting agreement. First, we explain the concept of this business agreement and its implications on maritime operations. Then, we identify key influencing factors that may affect the decisions of cooperative slot co-allocation. The slot co-allocation problem is modelled as an Integer Programming problem and solved using data from two routes between the United States and Asia. The model determines the optimal slot co-allocation strategies between shipping alliance carriers along allied shipping routes. Computational results indicate that the proposed method is effective in obtaining optimal, cooperative slot sharing strategies that can maximise the total system revenue.

Video monitoring is an important means of ship traffic supervision. In practice, regulators often need to use an electronic chart platform to determine basic information concerning ships passing through a video feed. To enrich the information in the surveillance video and to effectively use multimodal maritime data, this paper proposes a novel ship multi-object tracking technology based on improved single shot multibox detector (SSD) and DeepSORT algorithms. In addition, a night contrast enhancement algorithm is used to enhance the ship identification performance in night scenes and a multimodal data fusion algorithm is used to incorporate the ship automatic identification system (AIS) information into the video display. The experimental results indicate that the ship information tracking accuracies in the day and night scenes are 78⋅2% and 70⋅4%, respectively. Our method can effectively help regulators to quickly obtain ship information from a video feed and improve the supervision of a waterway.

High-precision underwater positioning must eliminate the influence of refraction artefacts. Since a Time Of Arrival - Global Navigation Satellite System Intelligent Buoys (TOA-GIB) system does not measure incident beam angles, common refraction correction methods cannot be directly used for refraction artefacts. An Equivalent Sound Speed (ESS) iteration method is proposed and is based on the transformation relations between depth, the ESS gradient and the incident beam angle. On this basis, a TOA/AOA-GIB system without a real-time Sound Speed Profile (SSP) is proposed to estimate the target position and the ESS gradient as unknown parameters. The results from a simulation experiment show that the positioning accuracy of a TOA/AOA-GIB system is better than 0·07% of water depth when the accuracy of the incident beam angle is 0·1°.

Fine initial alignment is vital to the Inertial Navigation System (INS) before the launching of a missile. The existing initial alignment methods are mainly performed on a stationary base after the missile has been erected to the vertical state. However, these methods consume extra alignment time and some state variables have poor degrees of observability, thus losing the rapidity of alignment. In order to solve the problem, a fast fine initial self-alignment method of a missile-borne INS is proposed, which is performed during the erecting process on a stationary base. The convected Euler angle error is modelled to optimise the erecting manoeuvre which can prevent large Euler angle errors and improve the system observability. The fine initial alignment model is established to estimate and correct the initial misalignment. Several experiments verify that the proposed method is effective for improving the rapidity of the fine initial alignment for a missile-borne INS.

This paper analyses flight trial results to study the overall performance and limitations of a GPS/Pseudolite/INS integration approach for aircraft precision approach and landing applications. For this purpose, the series of approaches were flown at Wedderburn Airfield, Australia. The analysed results show that pseudolite signals strengthen the ranging signal availability and the satellite geometry. Most of the geometry enhancement is found in the vertical position component, improving the accuracy of the aircraft's altitude. Furthermore, the results reveal that the inclusion of a pseudolite enhances both internal and external reliabilities. A dramatic improvement of the external reliability in the vertical component is observed.

The single initial Global Positioning System (GPS) has been expanded into multiple global and regional navigation satellite systems (multi-GNSS/RNSS) as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) is restored and the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), Galileo Satellite Navigation System (Galileo) and Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) evolve. Using the differences among these five systems, the paper constructs a consolidated multi-GNSS/RNSS precise point positioning (PPP) observation model. A large number of datasets from Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) stations are employed to evaluate the PPP performance of multi-GNSS/RNSS. The paper draws three main conclusions based on the experimental results. (1) The combined GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/BDS/QZSS presents the PPP with the shortest mean convergence time of 11·5 min, followed by that of GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/BDS (12·4 min). (2) The combined GPS/GLONASS/BDS/Galileo/QZSS shows the optimal PPP performance when the cut-off elevation angle is basically the same because of the rich observation data due to a large number of satellites. To be specific, for combined GPS/GLONASS/BDS/Galileo/QZSS, the PPP convergence percentage is 80·9% higher relative to other combined systems under 35° cut-off elevation angle, and the percentages of the root mean square values of PPP within 0–5 cm are enhanced by 80·5%, 81·5% and 87·3% in the North, East and Up directions relative to GPS alone at 35° cut-off elevation angle. (3) GPS alone fails to conduct continuous positioning due to the insufficiency of visible satellites at 40° cut-off elevation angle, while the kinematic PPP of multi-GNSS/RNSS remains capable of obtaining positioning solutions with relatively high accuracy, especially in the horizontal direction.

The geometric distribution of navigational aids is one of the most important elements to be taken into account in the planning of maritime terrestrial navigation systems. It determines to a large extent the capability of vessels to obtain high-precision position coordinates. Therefore, the optimisation of their location is a key element at the planning stage, in particular on port approach fairways. This article attempts to use computer simulation methods to assess the positioning accuracy of a vessel that follows a constant course and speed on a port approach fairway. The analysis uses a technique based on the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) Two-Dimensional (2D) Range-Bearing Simultaneous Location and Mapping (SLAM) method. In the simulation experiment conducted, the research object determined its position based on bearing and distance to fixed position beacons, which changed their locations in subsequent passages of the vessel. A geometrically optimal configuration of the terrestrial navigation marking system guaranteeing the highest positioning accuracy was identified as a result of the deliberations. The study analysed more than 20,000 cases of different configurations (locations) of the fixed position beacons, demonstrating that the adopted algorithm can be used successfully in the planning of their deployment in the context of ensuring minimum accuracy requirements for the positioning of navigational signs on port approach fairways and under restricted conditions by navigational marking services, as set out in International Maritime Organization (IMO) Resolutions A915 (21) and A953(22).

Tropospheric delay is one of the main error sources in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Precise Point Positioning (PPP). Zenith Hydrostatic Delay (ZHD) accounts for 90% of the total delay. This research focuses on the improvements of ZHD from tropospheric models and real meteorological data on the PPP solution. Multi-GNSS PPP experiments are conducted using the datasets collected at Multi-GNSS Experiments (MGEX) network stations. The results show that the positioning accuracy of different GNSS PPP solutions using the meteorological data for ZHD correction can achieve an accuracy level of several millimetres. The average convergence time of a PPP solution for the BeiDou System (BDS), the Global Positioning System (GPS), Global Navigation Satellite System of Russia (GLONASS), BDS+GPS, and BDS+GPS+GLONASS+Galileo are 55·89 min, 25·88 min, 33·30 min, 20·50 min and 15·71 min, respectively. The results also show that atmospheric parameters provided by real meteorological data have little effect on the horizontal components of positioning compared to the meteorological model, while in the vertical component, the positioning accuracy is improved by 90·6%, 33·0%, 22·2% and 19·8% compared with the standard atmospheric model, University of New Brunswick (UNB3m) model, Global Pressure and Temperature (GPT) model, and Global Pressure and Temperature-2 (GPT2) model and the convergence times are decreased 51·2%, 32·8%, 32·5%, and 32·3%, respectively.

The acquisition and tracking strategies of the BeiDou navigation satellite signals are affected by the modulation of Neumann-Hoffman code (NH code), which increases the complexity of receiver baseband signal processing. Based on the analysis of probability statistics of the NH code, a special sequence of incoming signals is proposed to evade the bit transitions caused by the NH code, and an NH Code Evasion and Stripping method (NCES) based on the NH-pre-modulated code is proposed. The NCES can be applied in both 20-bit NH code and 10-bit NH code. The fine acquisition eliminates the impact of NH code on the traditional tracking loop. These methods were verified with a BeiDou PC-based software-defined receiver using the actual sampled signals. Compared with other acquisition schemes which try to determine or ignore the NH code phase, the NCES needs fewer incoming signals and the actual runtime is greatly reduced without sacrificing much time to search in the secondary code dimension, and the success rate of acquisition is effectively improved. An extension of Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)-based parallel code-phase search acquisition gives the NCES an advantage in engineering applications.

Animals use many different mechanisms to navigate in space. The characteristics of the mechanism employed are usually well-suited to the demands of each particular navigational problem. For example, desert ants navigating in a relatively featureless environment use path integration, birds homing or migrating over long distances use compasses of various sorts, salmon returning to their natal stream home on olfactory cues. The study of navigation requires the study of many different taxa confronting different problems. One interesting case involves scatter-hoarding species that use memory to relocate their hidden food. Such animals face the problem of remembering many locations simultaneously. Clark's nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) are an excellent example, and this paper considers their possible use of multiple bearings from landmarks.

The main problems faced by a dynamic model within a Kalman filter occur when the system experiences unexpected dynamic conditions, a change in data acquisition rate, or when the dynamics of the system are non-linear. To minimize the errors produced from dynamic modelling in unusual conditions, an extended dynamic model is developed in this paper, and its usefulness demonstrated through comparison of the performance of a Kalman filter's response to simulated data with a standard dynamic model and the extended dynamic model. The results show that, in use, the proposed extended dynamic model is superior to a standard dynamic model, due mainly to its ability to adapt to a wider range of dynamic conditions, which in turn ensures the optimization of the Kalman filter and the consequent generation of reliable positioning results.

This paper addresses the issue of state estimation in the integration of a Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS) and Global Positioning System (GPS), which is used for airborne earth observation positioning and orientation. For a nonlinear system, especially with large initial attitude errors, the performance of linear estimation approaches will degrade. In this paper a nonlinear error model based on angle errors is built, and a nonlinear estimation algorithm called the Central Difference Rauch-Tung-Striebel (R-T-S) Smoother (CDRTSS) is utilized in SINS/GPS integration post-processing. In this algorithm, the measurements are first processed by the forward Central Difference Kalman filter (CDKF) and then a separate backward smoothing pass is used to obtain the improved solution. The performance of this algorithm is compared with a similar smoother based on an extended Kalman filter known as ERTSS through Monte Carlo simulations and flight tests with a loaded SINS/GPS integrated system. Furthermore, a digital camera was used to verify the precision of practical applications in a check field with numerous reference points. All these validity checks demonstrate that CDRTSS is a better method and the work of this paper will offer a new approach for SINS/GPS integration for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and other airborne earth observation tasks.

How do Aborigines find their way across the arid wastes of Central Australia? Certainly their feats of practical orientation and tracking are legendary. Are their methods in any way analogous to the non-instrumental arts still surviving in parts of the insular Pacific? (Lewis, 1972). In 1972 the professor of Pacific History at the Australian National University generously extended to Central Australia the accepted bounds of Oceania, to allow me to travel the Simpson Desert with Antikarinya tracker Wintinna Mick in an attempt to find answers to these questions. Subsequently, in 1973 and 1974, a grant from the Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies and a Visiting Fellowship in Anthropology from the A.N.U. enabled me to extend the investigation into the Western Desert, under the tutelage of men most of whom had spent their youth as nomadic stone age hunters. What they taught me makes up the bulk of this paper and provides some sort of answers to our opening questions.

A version of this paper was presented at ENC-GNSS 2007, Geneva. Its reproduction was kindly authorised by the ENC-GNSS 07 Paper Selection Committee.

The General Lighthouse Authorities of the UK & Ireland commissioned an assessment of the impact that the integration of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) with Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) would have on the aids to navigation (AtoN) services currently provided, and those to be provided in the future. There is concern about the vulnerability of GNSS, and the provision of complementary and backup systems is seen to be of great importance. The integration of INS could provide an independent and self-contained navigation system, for a limited time period, invulnerable to external intentional or unintentional interference, or the influences of changes in national policies. The study included an analysis of the potential use of GNSS-INS in three of the four phases of a vessel's voyage: coastal, port approach and docking. The project consisted of a technology assessment, looking at the different inertial technologies that might be suitable for each phase. This was followed by a technology proving stage, evaluating suitable equipment using simulation and field trials to prove that the claimed performance could be achieved in practice. The final stage of the project was to assess the effects of the availability of such systems on existing and planned aids to navigation services.