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System Description
The Sperry Marine R4 AIS Transponder consists of a radio transceiver unit, a GPS receiver, a controller unit and a separate display. The transceiver contains three independent VHF receivers, two Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) tuneable receivers, and one DSC receiver, and one transmitter. The transmitter alternates its transmissions between the two operating TDMA channels, and can also be used to reply to a DSC interrogation (ITU-R M.825-3, Annex 1). The internal GPS receiver provides accurate time synchronization. It can also be used as a backup source of ship's Speed Over Ground (SOG), Course Over Ground (COG) and position information in case of failure of main sensors. The controller creates and schedules data packets for transmission based on Dynamic, Static and Voyage related data as defined in the IMO performance standard.
The Sperry Marine R4 AIS Transponder can easily be interfaced to the required sensors on the bridge, e.g., gyro and GNSS. It has already been tested and interfaced with most available external navigation presentation systems (Radar, ECS / ECDIS). The R4 is prepared for connection to long range systems like Inmarsat C. It has a user-friendly interface for plotting other ships on a radar like display. It can also display information about other vessels sorted by bearing or by range. The display also handles the sending / receiving of messages.
