Surveillance of the 200 nautical mile EEZ using HFSWR in association with a spaced-based AIS interceptor

To protect maritime sovereignty, security forces require real-time information concerning the location, identification and activity of ships operating within their 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Today, monitoring of surface activity within the EEZ is limited and largely dependent on co-operative vessels voluntarily communicating their intentions to local shore-side authorities as well as on those vessel sightings reported by patrollers. Recent advances in technology provide maritime nations with options to provide more systematic surveillance of both cooperative and noncooperative targets. This paper presents a network-centric approach to maintaining a dynamic picture of surface activity within the EEZ. The system is characterised by the use of land-based High Frequency Surface Wave Radar (HFSWR) to provide persistent surveillance of all ocean-going vessels. However, translating this track information into actionable data requires that as many of the tracks as possible are tagged with their corresponding vessel identification. In this paper we introduce space-based interception of a vessel's Automated Identification Systems (AIS) broadcast to provide the identification and location of appropriately equipped vessels. In such a system those radar tracks not associated with an appropriate AIS (or, for that matter, AIS tracks where there is no supporting sensor data), can be highlighted for priority attention.