Iridium Communications provide truly global reach through developing and manufacturing a range of satellite communication technologies, including equipment and services that are designed specifically to provide reliable connectivity in marine and maritime industries.
One of the company’s most recent achievements in this area was the release of a global maritime distress and safety system, the Certus GMDSS, featuring a distress alert, safety voice, and Maritime Safety Information (MSI).
The GMDSS integrates additional regulated services like Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) and Ship Security Alert System (SSAS), and was based off of Iridium’s trusted Certus broadband technology.
This Certus technology has been used in a variety of maritime industries, notably autonomous and uncrewed surface vessels like the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS), a state-of-the-art transatlantic vessel designed to gather environmental data and chance the face of ocean science.
Certus, among other innovative low-SWaP SATCOM solutions from Iridium, enables critical capabilities such as situational awareness and collision detection, ship-to-shore data transfer and telematics, and propulsion systems monitoring.
Backed by an advanced network of 66 crosslinked Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, Iridium’s solutions empower a wide range of maritime applications and enable unprecedented communication across the world’s oceans.
The company’s flexible solutions are not only limited to Certus — this enables broadband connectivity, but Iridium also produces low-latency Short Burst Data (SBD) for status updates, as well as many solutions in between for applications including:
- Floating lab operations
- Autonomous research vessels
- Data-gathering buoys, gliders, and remote sensors
- Tsunami early warnings & oil spill detection
- Wildlife monitoring
- Scientist communications – email, voice, SMS, data transfer
An especially important further application is in the commercial fishing industry, providing voice and data services to anywhere in the world for maritime vessels of any size in tough weather conditions.
Find out more about the use of Iridium SATCOM technologies in maritime safety and security, the fishing industry, long-range identification and tracking, and much more on the company’s profile.
