1. Alaska Beacon Adapting the Iridium Network to Enable Search and Rescue John Bystroff,The Boeing Company Ignacio Gómez,KinetX Inc Robert Kikta,NexGen Communications The Fourth Space Internet Workshop SIW-4 June 8 th –10 th, 2004 NexGen Communications Copyright © 2004 The Boeing Company. All rights reserved.

2. Overview Opportunity Project Constraints Available Tools  Descriptions Challenges Final Process / Procedures Final Product

3. An Opportunity to Help ? ? Iridium receiving multiple requests for assistance from Alaska Rescue Coordination Center (ARCC) Significant subscriber growth in Alaska  Bush Pilot market New Iridium Short Burst Data (SBD) service recently rolled out

4. Project Constraints Schedule (Technical Development)  Kick-off: Oct 27, 2003  Process / Procedures Due: Dec 16, 2003 Deliverables Quality  Negotiated with ARCC  Provide latitude / longitude information  Qualify data—based on accuracy & precision  Respond within 90 minutes of request

5. Leveraging Tools Global satellite constellation SBD protocol / service Organizational relationships / responsibilities Billing system infrastructure Database / database query tools Email and phone infrastructure

6. Iridium Network Only provider of truly global, mobile satellite voice and data solutions Available 24/7 Complete coverage of the Earth 66 low-earth orbiting (LEO) satellites operated by Boeing

7. Short Burst Data (SBD) Service Added-on service – not part of original Iridium network design  Developed by NexGen Communications  Exploits network access protocols used to establish phone calls Efficiently sends short messages (up to 2kbytes)  <70 bytes in ~3 seconds  2000 bytes in ~20 seconds Internet

8. Beacon Service No cost to Iridium subscribers Involves re-flashing phones  Requires Service Provider (SP) coordination Automatically and transparently sends an empty SBD “message” every 6 minutes (~3 second transfer) User activated Beacon Activated

9. Results of Beacon Beacon test results with ARCC representative driving around Anchorage, Alaska Location captured every 6 minutes 23:31 22:2422:3022:4223:0123:0723:1923:25 22:4822:5423:13 22:36 22:18 22:12 10 Miles Anchorage (Time given in UTC)

10. Ground Systems Gateway at Tempe, AZ Operated by Iridium Satellite LLC  Handles all telephony / data connections  Handles all business functions  Generates Call Detail Records (CDRs) for billing Contain location information  18/7 operations Satellite and Network Operations Center at Leesburg, VA Operated by Boeing  Service Management  Ground Network Management 24/7 operations

11. Implementation Challenges Issue: Beacon subscribers not provisioned for SBD service Solution: Transfer of SBD CDR information to Boeing includes “non-billable” connection information from an Error Table Issue: SBD is not associated with GSM standard SIM Card / Phone Number (MSISDN) Solution: Run query on MSISDN against the voice/data call CDR database

12. Geo-Location Accuracy Issue: Geo-location information from satellite can be extremely inaccurate  If beam coverage straddles the satellite’s ground path, ambiguities produced in location solution Solution: SBD / Beacon provides additional information of Beam ID used for connection, and Circular Error Probability (CEP) of geo-location  Profile made of beam performance  Algorithm designed to qualify accuracy of geo-location based on Beam and CEP Result: Able to scale a “Probability Box” around the geo-location point according to data  (see next slide) Plot of test calls made in Chandler AZ

13. ANCHORAGE Kenai Peninsula Box 1 – 197 km x 18 km Box 2,3,5,6,9,11,12 Box 4,7,8 Box 10 Box 1 Precision (Minimum box size): -10 km x 10 km (100 sq Km) -6.2 mi x 6.2 mi (38 sq Mi) Example of Geo-location Box

14. Process / Procedures Generation of Email Response to ARCC reduced to two Perl scripts  1 st script collects relevant CDRs  2 nd script incorporates CDRs and box generation algorithms to generate email content Procedure and training developed for real-time operations crews to process ARCC requests

15. ARCC Report Geo-location information from last 20 contacts, from most recent to oldest # Date/Time Contact_Type Phone_number/Equipment_ID Latitude Longitude Lower_Latitude Lower_Longitude Upper_Latitude Upper_Longitude 1 2003/12/11 20:33:26 UTC Beacon 300001001361470 LAT: 36º 7' 2.848" LON: 262º 52' 27.095" LLAT: 35º 50' 32.745" LLON: 262º 28' 33.082" ULAT: 36º 23' 32.951" ULON: 263º 16' 21.108" … 20 2003/12/11 19:24:59 UTC Beacon 300001001361470 LAT: 36º 7' 2.847" LON: 262º 52' 27.096" LLAT: 35º 50' 32.744" LLON: 262º 28' 33.083" ULAT: 36º 23' 32.950" ULON: 263º 16' 21.109" Excerpt from Email sent to ARCC

16. Box 1-Beacon Able to provide ARCC location and qualification of last known positions. Greatly reduces search area Box 15-Voice Call Box 13,14,18,20-Voice Calls Box 17-Voice Call Box 10 Box 16 Box 19 Box 2,3,5,6,9,11,12 Box 4,7,8 Pt 17 Pt 13,14,18,20-Beacon Pt 15 Results

17. Summary Successfully leveraged in-place architecture Effective cooperation and communication between teams key! ARCC now able to obtain rescue assistance for Iridium users  Real-world used: Nov 2, 2003