To establish better communication with vessels in sea and monitor Indian waters more efficiently, NewSpace India Ltd, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), is setting up mobile satellite service (MSS) terminals on at least one lakh motorised and fishing boats across 13 coastal states, officials said.
NewSpace India has started selecting private vendors to supply, install and commission MSS terminals for establishing vessel communication and support system in marine fishing vessels for monitoring, control and surveillance, they said.
“The overall scope of work of the project includes establishment of a dedicated MSS satcom network for supporting emergency communication and tracking of maritime assets Xponders. This includes establishment of dedicated 9m/11m C-band ground station and hub baseband system, arranging for satellite bandwidth and guiding required service approvals and building satellite terminals for field deployment across nine coastal states and four union territories,” the company’s proposal document said.
The system will be powered by India’s own navigation satellite system, NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation), which was launched by Isro last month.
The network will consist dedicated ground stations and satellite terminals for field deployment to provide better security to fishermen in Indian waters and improve national security. These Xponders will be installed in coastal states, including Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha, Maharashtra, Daman and Diu, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, Lakshadweep and West Bengal.
Once the network is established, authorities will be able to form a two-way communication system with fishermen, access locations periodically, issue emergency weather alerts, issue alerts for international water border violations and also provide accurate navigation alerts, officials said.
“All Xponders will have in-built wifi and bluetooth transceivers to communicate. A multilingual app is also being developed to allow communication between the app and transponders,” an official said.
