Radio Communications

Radio’s are required for communications between vessels and between vessels and shore stations. In maritime surveillance systems, the Command Centre needs to communicate with their own vessels during operations, as well as with commercial vessels to clarify their identity, understand their intentions and provide warnings where necessary.

Different frequencies and transmitter power are used depending on the range of communication required: very high frequency (VHF) radios are typically used for short distance communications and high frequency (HF) radios are for longer range communications. Military operators commonly use encrypted radio communications to maintain security.

Communication interfaces have radically changed in recent years. Today the interface to most radio and terrestrial communication systems is computer based. Voice over IP (VoIP) or Radio over IP (RoIP) are technologies used to remotely control a network of remote radios using PC based systems. As well as simplifying the control of radios, land base telephone systems are also integrated along with record and replay functionality that is required in case of incidents or accidents.

Our scalable and distributed shore based maritime communication systems support ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication. The joint radio and telephone infrastructure enables fast, safety-critical communication between all the different parties involved in maritime domain awareness. This infrastructure is managed from designated communication centres.