Constellation analysis of an integrated AIS/remote sensing spaceborne system for ship detection

A future system integrating data from remote sensing and upcoming AIS satellites is analyzed through the development of a novel design method for global, discontinuous coverage constellations. It is shown that 8 AIS satellites suffice to guarantee global coverage and a ship location update of 50 min if the spaceborne AIS receiver has a swath of 2800 nm. Furthermore, synergic utilization of COSMO/SkyMed and Radarsat-C data would provide a mean revisit time of 7 h, with AIS information available within 25 min from SAR data acquisition.