Iridium Satellite has signed a manufacturer agreement with the British marine electronics firm, McMurdo Ltd. to incorporate Iridium''s new, low-cost 9601 Short-Burst Data (SBD) Transceiver into a new man-overboard and automatic vessel reporting system.
McMurdo jointly developed the system with the UK’s Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and will market it under the MOB GUARDIAN name. McMurdo and the RNLI recently signed a licensing agreement giving McMurdo exclusive worldwide rights to manufacture, distribute and market the MOB GUARDIAN, which will be available from this spring.
The MOB GUARDIAN consists of an onboard monitoring device that uses the Iridium transceiver to transmit regular updates on a vessel's position, course and speed. If regular updates are missed, the shore-side monitoring station automatically transmits a message via satellite to the vessel to try and regain contact. If the vessel fails to restart sending updates, an alert is raised with search and rescue (SAR) organizations.
The system is also designed to work with personal safety devices (PSDs), which crew members can wear. A PSD will automatically alert SAR organizations of a man-overboard incident in typically less than one minute. The alert gives the position of the incident and provides regular updates of the location of the vessel to facilitate rescue.
"This is one of the first commercial applications for the new Iridium 9601 SBD Transceiver, which provides a compact, economic solution for embedding short-burst data capability into a wide range of packages for remote asset tracking, monitoring and telemetry," says Don Thoma, executive vice president of Iridium Satellite. "We believe that this exciting, new product will provide a major contribution to improving safety at sea."
