Testbed for performance evaluation of SAT-AIS receivers

The SAT-AIS technology, which offers global ship traffic monitoring from low earth orbit, is steadily gaining more attention within groups of communication hardware designers, as well as among safety policy chairman. Numerous research and business groups are elaborating hardware solutions. Motivated by testing needs as a result of the upcoming DLR AIS satellite-mission AISat, a dedicated AIS Testbed for Satellite Systems was developed. This paper describes the approaches and procedures, which were identified as the most significant for testing SAT-AIS hardware.