Software Defined Radio Implementation of a Single Channel Automatic Identification System Receiver

This paper presents the design and implementation of an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver with the use of a Software Defined Radio (SDR). AIS devices transmit and receive different navigational data such as location, speed and course of different maritime vessels autonomously and continuously. AIS is used to aid in the safe and secure navigation of different maritime vessels. The concepts of SDR are presented as well as the software required to execute the receiving function. The laboratory setup of the AIS receiver is arranged to acquire raw AIS data from real ships. The raw data is then passed to a set of demodulating signal blocks to acquire the AIS Message. The AIS Message received is decoded and the relevant information is extracted from the AIS packet. To check the result and performance of the SDR-based AIS receiver, the received data is compared to the received signal of a commercial grade AIS transceiver. Based from the results, the SDR-based AIS receiver can effectively and accurately extract AIS messages from the raw AIS data packets.