R-Mode Testbed in the Baltic Sea

The southern part of the Baltic Sea between Germany, Poland, Sweden and Denmark is a challenging area for maritime navigation. Here safe navigation requires reliable positioning and timing information even in times with reduced performance of global navigation satellite systems. This area is characterised by a dense network of IALA beacons and AIS base stations with strongly overlapping service areas. This is a perfect region for the first permanent R(anging)-Mode testbed which utilises both signals-of-opportunity proposed so far. This paper describes the planned process to setup a transnational R-Mode testbed in the region between Kiel, Rostock (both Germany), Danzig (Poland), Kalmar and Halmstad (both Sweden). Based on the IALA R-Mode road map from 2016 key issues have been identified including the topics of signal design, multipath mitigation, time synchronisation, ranging and positioning. These will be addressed during the time of a three year testbed development process within the project R-Mode Baltic.