Concerns around GNSS jamming, spoofing and signal disruption continue to grow. For vessel operators, that means finding new ways to maintain reliable dynamic positioning (DP), to keep critical operations running safely.
But it also increasingly means how to get their initial real-world position to start operating when GNSS is not available – aka non-GNSS initialisation.
For DP integrators, the challenge is finding the right mix of independent references, often from multiple suppliers. These need to work seamlessly together to create a credible and resilient DP solution across a variety of vessel operations.
As part of a long-term partnership, we recently worked with Guidance Marine and Veripos to demonstrate a fully integrated, flexible DP reference sensor suite – testing both new and established references – in real-world conditions.
The demonstration, out of our Plymouth trials and training facility, included Guidance Marine’s radar positioning technology, our SPRINT-Nav DP navigation reference and Ranger 2 Ultra-Short BaseLine (USBL) acoustic positioning systems and Veripos’ LD900 GNSS solutions.
In an industry first, we showed how radar-based position references and pre-calibrated seabed transponders could be used to initialise SPRINT-Nav DP, in the latter case via a Ranger 2 USBL system to establish a real-world vessel position, independent of GNSS signals.
We also showed how these technologies can work together within a single DP architecture, providing and maintaining reliable positioning when satellite signals are unavailable, degraded or untrusted.
Guidance Marine
In an industry first the Guidance Radar was used to initialise the SPRINT-Nav with an absolute position based on a previously surveyed map of Plymouth Sound. Initialisation using this type of technology has not been done before. This created a stable, continuously updated navigation solution. Once the SPRINT-Nav was initialised the input position feed was disabled and the system operated as an independent PRS.
