Spring 2006

International vehicle, trailer and container tracking on the Space Checker system is now available in the UK under a distribution agreement set up by SatCom, a specialist supplier of satellite communications equipment.

The company says it can offer position updates as frequently as every five minutes for a flat monthly fee, which it says is competitive with GSM solutions "in most cases".

Space Checker, a Belgian-based operation, is what might be termed a "true" satellite-based tracking system, which uses GPS to fix the location of assets, and satellite L-band links to communicate the information back to the user.

For the communications part, it uses the European Space Agency's Artemis geostationary satellite, which was launched in 2001. This provides coverage over the whole of Europe and Africa, plus most of Asia and the Far East. The company is extending the coverage area by bringing two Express satellites into the network.

 

This type of operation usually runs its own land earth station (LES), where communications to and from the satellite are connected to a terrestrial comms network. Space Checker's LES is at Leuven in Belgium. From here it is fed to a national operating centre. It says the time from position report to availability of data at its operating centre is three seconds.

SatCom is offering both standard tracking packages and bespoke systems. The operator package includes a computer application with a mapping front end. The company says the system can also interface with existing software, or be delivered over the Internet.

Satellite-based tracking has been adopted more widely In the US road transport market than in Britain. In one of the latest developments there, ARGO Tracker has just started using the Iridium satellite network, which has no fewer than 66 satellites in low-earth orbit.