Sept/Oct 2004

The same technology that will enable travellers to send emails to and from transatlantic aircraft is now being harnessed to track shipping containers on the high seas - and it could turn into the backbone of a universal global communication system.

The development is based on a project called WirelessCabin, which has been developed by DLR, the German aerospace centre, to iron out problems inherent in this kind of technology. Participants include Airbus Deutschland, Ericsson, Siemens, TriaGnoSys, Inmarsat (the communications satellite company) and the University of Bradford.

Now some of the concepts inherent in their research have been adapted for something called GPRS-SMS Gateway Platform, which is a joint system from TriaGnoSys Wessling, Germany and MobinTeleCom Oy of Helsinki, Finland.

Its immediate objective is to meet the future demands of the United States' Homeland Security requirements for shipping containers. The existing system allows containers to be monitored by means of RFID tags when they pass in and out of ports. This new product extends the concept by allowing door openings and tampering to be sensed even when the containers are in the middle of the ocean, and uses satellite comms to relay the information back to base in real time.

 

The turnkey solution consists of a tri-band 900-1800-1900 GSM-GPRS-GPS telematics transceiver integrated with a RFID transponder on the container door seal. There is also a telematics "black box" inside the door. Any breach of security, compromise or tampering with the door seal triggers an alarm instantly to the security monitoring station on the ground, giving coordinates, date and time of the incident. The system users satellite comms in remote places, but terrestrial GPRS and GSM services where they are available.

The developers are looking for potential users and partners, and say they might expand the concept to offer ordinary business users Internet connectivity that works anywhere in the world on any device, and gives customers a single point of billing.