There are approximately 7 million maritime-style containers within Canada, and 70 million within the US. The interiors of such containers are rarely inspected. With market globalization, a large amount of these containers enter North America on a daily basis. Such containers may include contraband or dangerous items that present an economic or security risk. Despite significant security improvements, only 3 to 5 % of the maritime containers, that arrive in, or transition through, North America, go through physical inspection. Current container tracking technologies based on GPS consume high DC power, are costly, require line-of-sight with satellites, and are often too large to be covert. It is possible to overcome some of these limitations by basing the tracking system on the FM broadcast signal which is an alternative man-made signal that is reasonably ubiquitous, provides a geographically-unique frequency spectrum and is about 100,000 times as strong as a GPS satellite signal. This allows the development of a low-cost, low-power and miniature FM receiver that can record frequency spectrums and compare them to known data in order to trace the path that the container has taken for less than $10 per container. This presents the first results of highway trials (train and sea trials are currently being conducted) of such a low-cost, covert, non-GPS based technology (called "FM Tag") that records the worldwide displacement of containers and displays the path undertaken by the container while in transit. As an added security benefit, the tag is also capable of detecting container door openings. In addition to presenting the first trial results, this covers the innovative engineering aspects of using the metal enclosure of a maritime container as a VBF antenna, thereby eliminating the need to add an external antenna and achieving the goal of being 100% covert.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Maritime Containers Tracking Trial Results


    Contributors:
    Schmidt, R. (author) / Gagnon, A. (author) / Allcock, D. (author)


    Publication date :

    2009-09-01


    Size :

    3134450 byte




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Maritime Container Tracking Trial Results

    Schmidt, R. | Online Contents | 2009


    Maritime containers

    Batisse, F. | British Library Online Contents | 2000


    ARTICLES - Maritime containers

    Batisse, Fr | Online Contents | 2000


    Optimization-Simulation for Maritime Containers Transfer

    Benghalia, Abderaouf / Oudani, Mustapha / Boukachour, Jaouad et al. | Tema Archive | 2014


    Improving safety of maritime containers shipping

    Ricci, Stefano / Rizzetto, Luca | Elsevier | 2025

    Free access