Description

Smaller boats can easily go undetected by radar systems on larger commercial vessels, because the radar’s line-of-sight can be blocked by the superstructure of the ship or can also miss the boat due to the high placement of the radar antenna. This can easily exceed 30 m over the sea level. The AIS is not line-of-sight and the range is typically about 20 nautical mile. This is one major reason why large commercial vessels are required to carry an AIS transponder. AIS focuses your awareness on all vessels in your vicinity and helps reduce the risk of collision by exchanging safety data between them, such as vessel name, size and call sign – Maritime Mobile Service Identity number (MMSI), vessel type, time to closest point of approach, course, speed and heading. Simrad is currently the only major brand that offers NMEA2000/SimNet compatible Class-B Transmit and Receive AIS transponder systems, both as an integrated standalone product with color display (AI50) and as a black box solution (NAIS-300) designed for use with any AIS-compatible multi-function display product.