Patent ID: 8731750

Claim:
A system for augmenting a range of an existing Automatic Identification System (AIS) system, said system comprising: communication means to exchange information between one or more elements forming said system; one or more land-based processing centres comprising: communication interfaces to exchange information with different users, to receive information from reference ships, and from one or more coastal stations, and to broadcast consolidated and extended information after processing to said reference ships and coastal stations, which will relay to other ships via the AIS channel, a set of processors suitable to merge information of different types for aggregating the AIS data originating from all the ships within AIS range of the reference ships or the coastal stations, with other data, one or more databases, and a memory to store information to be processed; means for determining dynamically reference ships and associated service; the one or more coastal stations being equipped with an AIS transceiver and being linked with the one or more land-based processing centres by the communication interfaces, allowing for an exchange of information; one or more ships equipped with AIS transceiver and satellite communication means, eligible as the reference ships by the land-based processing centres controlling an area where the one or more ships are located for a given time period, said reference ships communicating with the land-based processing centres by satellite means, and with other ships within the VHF range by the AIS system; and at least two ships, different from the reference ships, provided at least with an AIS receiver to retrieve the extended information broadcast by a reference ship or reference coastal stations within VHF range.