Dynamic positioning principles and theory.

Edited and updated by Peter Aird

Rev 1.1 April 2001.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
Table of contents
Dynamic positioning principles and theory...........................................................1
Table of contents..............................................................................................2
Dynamic positioning principles.............................................................................3
General.............................................................................................................3
DP Theory ............................................................................................................5
Introduction.......................................................................................................5
Summary ..........................................................................................................6
The Vessels Model...........................................................................................7
The Corrective Model. ......................................................................................9
Thruster Set Ups. ...........................................................................................11
Introduction to Sonardyn acoustic positioning system. ......................................13
Summary ........................................................................................................13
Short Baseline System (SBL) Operation. .......................................................13
Long Baseline System (LBL) Operation. ........................................................13
Integrated Long and Short Baseline System (LSBL) Operation.....................14
Vessel; Installed Equipment Overview. ......................................................14
Introduction to Racal “Multifix” DGPS. ...............................................................15
Summary ........................................................................................................15
DETAIL...........................................................................................................16
STEP 1. ......................................................................................................16
STEPS 2 TO 5 ...........................................................................................17
STEP 6. ......................................................................................................17
The Link With Cegelec 900 DPS System.......................................................19

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
Dynamic positioning principles.
General
The function of D.P. is to ensure a vessel retains position and heading by
automatically controlling the direction and amount of thrust from the vessels
thrusters and/or main propulsion engines to counteract the environmental
forces.

To carry out the above the following subsystems are required.

a.) A method of measuring external forces.

Wind sensors measure wind speed and direction. These forces are
compensated for before they move the vessels position rather than
correcting position after movements have taken place.
A technique known as feed forward is used to predict vessel response.

b.) A method of measuring the vessel's position.

Several methods are used to provide optimum reliability, each system being
independent so that no single failure mode is common to all.
• Hydro acoustic transponders.
• Taut wire.
• Flex joint angle inclinometers.
• Riser angle acoustic beacons.

The heading is measured by gyro compasss

Errors are minimised in position reference sensors by compensating the

movement of the vessel. Measurements of pitch and roll are taken by a vertical
reference unit to calculate the compensation.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
DP Theory
Introduction.
The example text serves to illustrate the importance of installation, design and
commissioning issues of a dynamic positioning system in this case a Cegelec
DPS 900 dynamic positioning system on board a drillship that was previously
fitted only with anchor and main propulsion systems. This text also serves to
underline the importance of ‘getting it right first time’ with the Vessels Model.

It is important to note that it is the Vessels Model that serves as the foundation
for the whole DP system. Get it wrong or partly wrong and the onus is shifted to
getting it right ‘in the field’. Using data from the vessels class construction details
was in this case the only, but not the ideal or preferred option open to the
Cegelec engineers in this case. Finally, the vessels owner probably learned as
much from this dynamic positioning re-fit as every one else including the
operator involved.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
Summary
A floating vessel is exposed to 6 degrees of freedom, pitch, yaw, surge, sway,
roll and heave. The dynamic positioning (DP) system can only control yaw,
surge and sway.

Cegelec on first approached for systems upgrade, initially supplied a long

questionnaire for the vessel’s owner to fill in. This is because Cegelec needed to
know all about the design of the vessel and its behavioural characteristics to
help them build the computer models that lie at the very heart of the DP control
system software; questions that the vessels owners more than often, did not have all
the answers for.

Cegelec thus tried to get around the grey areas caused by the gaps in the
questionnaire by using information they had on a sister vessel. However as no
two sister vessels, least of all the vessel where the system had to be installed,
that had 8 anchors and handling equipment retro-fitted, plus two mid-vessel
sponsons welded on during its operational life. So it was acknowledged by the
vessel owner and Cegelec that there would be significant amounts of fine tuning
to be done on site during the sea trials to make up for the errors that were bound
to occur in the computer modelling done in Cegelec’s operating base.

This proved to be the case, and hence the requirement for sea trials was
established. The system by sea trial time may be in an operational form but it is
not in perfect mode to meet the vessels response to the different modes of
Position Monitoring Equipment (PME), and the occasional positional errors
computed by the system. e.g. In reality the positional errors thrown up by the DP
system during trials were eventually within a radius of 5 metres.

This was determine to be within 1.3 to 4 degree riser angle limit as

recommended by a study conducted by WS Atkins as the maximum safe drilling
zone for the water depth of the well to be drilled (In this case 2800ft.). WS
Atkins also recommend that the safe drilling limit at this water depth was 9m with
vessel experiencing 6 metre significant waves downstream of a 4.8 knot current
- which is an extremely fast current.

The Cegelec engineers were confident that once on location, the DP system
would have time to ‘settle down’. As part of the DPS 900 system is described as
an expert system that has the ability to learn from its PME inputs and thruster
outputs and close the gap between the vessels computer predicted behaviour
and the actual behaviour, once it has been in one location for a period of time.

The Cegelec DP system software comprises of two main components: the

Vessels Model and the Corrective Model.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
The Vessels Model.
The vessels model for the vessel was based on the sister vessel built by the
same yard. It models the dynamic behaviour of the vessel in terms of mass,
velocity, acceleration and forces generated by the thrusters and propellers.

Cegelec describe it as a second order system that uses a double integrator: to

get from acceleration to velocity to distance measured in metres requires two
integration steps.

Environmental measurements are also included in the model in so far as the

vessels behaviour to different sea states is concerned. There is a measurement
called an RAO (Response Amplitude Operator) that describes a vessels response
to different wave heights and wave periods, and combinations thereof. e.g. if a
wave of 3 metres high hits the vessel, it heaves by 0.6 metres if the wave period is 7
seconds peak to peak. If the wave period is 10 seconds, the vessel will heave by 1.5
metres.

All this information is listed in the RAO data set unique to the vessel, or the
vessels class in this case. For each wave period, the data set gives the vessels
RAO in terms of surge, heave and pitch. It also gives the RAO phase lag in
degrees for each wave period, i.e. how many degrees in the wave cycle after the
wave peak does the vessel surge, heave or roll.

The vessel acts as a damper insofar as its motions do not exactly copy the sea
state. The degree of damping is designed into the hull by the Naval Architect.
Equipment additions, hull design alterations and variable deck loads will all
affect the dynamic response of the vessel, its handling in other words. E.g. the
same as having a stack of paving slabs in your car boot.

The Naval Architect can tune a vessel’s hull at the design stage and test tank
phase to engineer a different RAO profile depending on the sea conditions the
vessel is likely to face, and/or the type of operation the vessel is designed for. In
the case of the vessel, the Naval Architects design brief, one would hope,
would have been for maximum damping in oceanic type wave periods, not the
short choppy waves one experiences in the North Sea.

These dynamic behavioural patterns are termed low frequency, first order
movements in that they are not velocity or acceleration components, they can
only be measured in metres as they displace along an axis, port/starboard and
bow/stern. The movement of the vessel is proportional to the wave height and
these movements can be felt by those on board. Remember that these motions
are damped by the vessels design but they cannot be significantly altered once
the vessel is built. The sponsons on the vessel have had an effect but the
magnitude of that effect is difficult to fathom, so say the Cegelec engineers.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
Another low frequency first order component is drift; the movement of the vessel
caused by groups of waves. Again, drift is a first order movement but unlike
pitch roll and heave, its frequency of movement can be controlled by the vessels
heading and the use of the thrusters and propellers.

The high frequency section of the Vessels Model models the high frequency
motions such as the ‘sea state spectrum’. The sea state spectrum is a data set
of Significant Wave Height Hs (the mean of the highest 1/3 of the waves) plotted
against the number of times it occurs in a Wave Period, Tz. For example, the
Combined Autumn Sea States Chart for the South Eastern Atlantic shows that a
wave height of 2.5 - 3 m occurs most frequently in the 6 -7 second wave period.
The North Sea would have a completely different sea state spectrum.

On location, the Position Measurement Systems (PME’s) such as the

Sonardyne LSBL and the DGPS, and the Vertical Reference Units (VRU’s) such
as the pitch and roll sensors, and the gyrocompasses and the wind speed and
direction monitors - all feed their information into the DP system. The Vessels
model knows - in theory - how the drillship should react to the wind and sea
forces acting upon it, and it forecasts a position from its present position at Time
‘T’ and where it will be at Time ‘T+x’ seconds; x seconds is the time taken for the
system to generate a new fix. In the case of the DGPS, the update is every 2
seconds. With the Sonardyne LSBL, the update is every 8 seconds - more of
which later.

The idea behind all this modelling, behavioural characteristics and positional
forecasting is to minimise the wear and tear to the thrusters. Without it, the DP
system would be instructing the thrusters to ‘reactively’ trim their pitch every 2
seconds, and they would be worn out within days. To draw another car analogy,
imagine you are the driver and all you do all day is press the accelerator and hit
the brakes in a 2 second cycle because you are blindfolded and you are acting
on instructions given to you by a passenger. The car engine will be ready for a
tune-up and you’ll be needing new pads and discs before long. If the DP
system is allowed to think ahead just like a good car driver and anticipate what
will happen, then the signals sent to the thrusters can be ‘harmonised’ so there
are no sudden changes in propeller pitch angle. Changes to the pitch angles are
‘proactive’ and hence the amount of thrust delivered are ‘smoothed’.

So, the thruster pitch angle is trimmed by the Vessels Model every 2 seconds in
DGPS mode and every 8 seconds in Sonardyne mode to bring the drillship back
from its theoretical offset position back to its dead centre location.

This is where the Corrective Model comes in.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
The Corrective Model.

The Corrective Model serves to compare the sum of the estimates of sway,
surge and yaw generated by the Vessels Model and its forecast position based
on the above, and compare it with what has actually happened. What has
actually happened is taken as the new position fix calculated as the median
value from the PME’s (Sonardyne and DGPS). The Corrective Model then
makes sure that theoretical equals reality.

For example, the Vessels Model says that according to the movement of the
drillship caused by the waves, the period in which it is moving and the direction
of the wind in relation to the bow that it has measured from the PME’s, VRU’s
etc., its position relative to last fix is 6 metres North West. The Sonardyne and
the DGPS median value report that its true position is in fact 4 metres North
North West.

The Corrective Model then trims the pitch of the thrusters from their present
setting to bring the vessel back from the theoretical 6 metres NW to bringing the
vessel back from its actual position 4 metres NNW.

The DP system cannot measure the amplitude of the vessels low frequencies of
movement on their own but the DP system wants to control them. If the sum of
the low frequencies and the high frequencies is equal to the actual
measurement of the vessels motions - the reality, then assuming the high
frequencies - the sea state spectrum part mapped into the Vessels Model - are
correct, then the low frequencies can be calculated and the vessels actual
position can be controlled.

The Corrective Model does this by filtering off the high frequency movements
modelled from the sea state spectrum to their mean position of zero. Picture a
sine wave representing changes in the vessels position about its desired
location, reduce the amplitude of these changes over time and the end result is
a flat line. A flat line equals zero deflection from the desired location. This of
course is the ideal but the sea and wind environment would need to be in a
‘steady state’ and the Earth would need to stop rotating for that to happen.

First generation DP systems used a piece of control systems trickery called a

‘band pass filter’. The band pass filter worked by smoothing the signal from the
change in the vessels position modelled by the sea state spectrum, and
harmonised the message passed to the thrusters telling them to trim their
propeller pitch angle and bring the vessel back over dead centre. Band pass
filters act just like an oil filter, they slow the electrical signal down just as an oil
filter slows the flow of oil down. With a DP system though, any delay to the
transfer of signals to the thrusters causes a time lag. The old band pass filters
could cause the signal to the thrusters to be delayed by 6 to 10 seconds. A fix to
www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
this problem was to include a ‘gain’ into the systems electrical signalling that
tried to offset the delay caused by the filter by ‘accelerating’ the signal after the
filtering. An induced gain helps but not much. After the time lag and the
artificially induced gain, the vessels position would have changed so the
thrusters were always fighting a losing battle to keep the vessel on location.

The Cegelec system uses a Kalman filter to smooth the high frequencies it
receives from the modelled sea state spectrum. Without a Control Systems
Analysis text book to describe how a Kalman filter works, an explanation will
have to be that it is better than a band pass filter and does not induce large time
lags. The Cegelec Corrector Model uses 9 Kalman filters to correct the vessels
predicted movements from the Vessels Model to the actual movements
recorded by the PME’s, VRU’s, etc.

When the Corrector Model works well, the predicted equals reality calculation is
‘instantaneous’ with no or very little time lag. The result is a harmonised
thruster response to commands, less wear and tear on the thrusters, better
station keeping, and a pro-active DP system that can predict events instead of a
reactive system that is always one step behind actual events.

The Corrector Model is a closed loop feedback system. The messages it

receives from the thrusters informing it of their respective pitch angles are fed
back into the Corrector Model so it can adjust and correct itself constantly;
hence the ‘expert system’ tag.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
Thruster Set Ups.

The tunnel thrusters installed by Lipps were only mechanically set up by their
engineers in dry dock. They measured the pitch angle of the propeller blades
between 0 and 22 degrees and altered the mechanical indicator to suit. What
they did not do was set up the thrusters electrically so the current demand could
be measured against the pitch angle. This exercise could have been done when
the dry dock was flooded. The DP system measures the thruster demand in
Amps. 150 A was thought to be equivalent to 22 degrees of pitch but some
thrusters reached this value with only 19 degrees. Others reached 22 degrees
with only 130 A. The Cegelec engineers have recommended that the vessels
owners draw graphs for each thruster to show the relation of vessel between
current and each degree of propeller pitch angle. This will take time and some
effort but it will serve as a useful tool for the DP operator to have close at hand.

Figure 1: Deepwater rigs thruster set ups.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
DP System Position Updates.

As stated previously, the DGPS updates the vessels position every 2 seconds.
The Sonardyne LSBL system updates itself every 8 seconds. The Sonardyne
seabed beacons are battery driven and the 8 second update extends battery life
to 300 days operation. Vessels owners approach to battery life is not necessarily
in keeping with an Operators approach, especially an Operator who is drilling a
65 day well. Vessels owner like the 8 second update as it allows them a) longer
time between battery change outs, and b) the opportunity to change the
batteries in 1 beacon after 100 days and a second or third after 200 days, so the
likelihood of all beacons going dead at the same time due to flat batteries is
minimised.

The Sonardyne beacons can be interrogated at a minimum of every 3 seconds,

with a corresponding drop in battery life.

When the DP system was having its overshoot problems during the sea trials
that caused the vessel to oscillate in ever increasing amounts in terms of
position, the Sonardyne LSBL system was the sole PME and the update was 8
seconds. The inclusion of the DGPS bought the oscillations down to more
manageable amounts. To have then altered the Sonardyne update would have
‘masked’ more serious flaws that existed between the predictive Vessels Model
and actual behaviour, so it was wisely left alone. To have altered the update
would have constituted a ‘quick fix’ and Neddrill, to their credit, did not do this.

Now that Cegelec have fine tuned the Vessels Model and the Corrective Model
to something more accurately representative of the vessels actual behaviour,
the Sonardyne update can, for the time being, stay at 8 seconds. However, if
the DGPS satellites do shut down or the signal received from the satellites is
affected by the vessels heading because the derrick interferes with the signal
strength, then the Sonardyne system is the only PME and its 8 second update
should be increased to a minimum of 3 seconds as conditions dictate.

The worst vessels heading for the DGPS and Inmarsat beacons mounted above
the bridge are between 95 and 120 degrees. As most of the prevailing weather
at 2012/13-1 is expected to come from the Southern quadrants, the ability to
update the Sonardyne system faster than 8 seconds should be considered if
satellite signal strength is adversely affected.

Remember that the DGPS cannot operate without the correction factors
transmitted via Inmarsat.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
Introduction to Sonardyn acoustic positioning system.

Summary
The integrated long and short baseline (LSBL) system is a repeat acoustic
positioning system. The main function of the system is to provide an accurate
position of a vessel relative to the seabed and transmit this information to the DP
system so the vessel can maintain its position over the wellhead. In addition to
this, 3 mobile targets can also be tracked, such as ROV’s in flight and LMRP’s
for re-connection to the stack.

Positions for the vessel and the mobile targets are computed from acoustic
range measurements between 4 transceivers mounted beneath the hull of the
vessel about the moon pool area and transponders positioned on the seabed
when the vessel first arrives on location, plus transponders strapped to the ROV
and LMRP.

Short Baseline System (SBL) Operation.

Typically, 4 hydrophones (receive only transducers) spaced around the moonpool
on the vessels hull receive signals from 1 or more transponders ‘pinging’ away
on the seabed close to or on the BOP stack. The computer on board measures
the difference in time between the arrival of the acoustic signals at each
hydrophone on the hull and it can compute the bearing of the transponder
(pinger) from the vessel. As the water depth will be accurately known on our
location, the data can be converted to horizontal offsets between the vessel and
each seabed transponder.

Long Baseline System (LBL) Operation.

The LBL system relies e.g on 4 transponders deployed at known positions on
the seabed about the well location, preferably in a square formation with the well
location at the centre. The best square spacing is 1/2 the water depth so in our
case, the transponders should be @350 m apart, with the well location in the
middle.

An interrogation signal is transmitted from one of the 4 transducers mounted on

the vessel hull in a square set pattern about the moon pool. All 4seabed
transponders receive the signal (the common interrogation frequency - CIF) and
reply with their own individual reply frequency (IRF).

The surface system receives all replies and measures the out and back time to
each transponder. With this information, the Sonardyne computer(s) on board
can compute the position of the vessel transducer relative to the seabed cluster
of 4 transponders.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
Integrated Long and Short Baseline System (LSBL) Operation.

The LSBL system offers the convenience of the SBL system and the higher
accuracies of the LBL system in one flexible package. The LBL and SBL
systems are combined so all four vessel transceivers are in communication with
up to 6 seabed transceivers (4 spaced for LBL and 2 for SBL on the stack and
LMRP).

All this information provides a high degree of redundancy so that the chance of
an ambiguous positional fix is less likely. The redundant information also allows
a statistical estimation of the accuracy of the computed position and helps to
improve the accuracy in the long term. In areas or times of poor acoustic
conditions ( main screws cavitating the water around the moon pool when in hard
reverse thrust, when a supply boat comes alongside, etc.) the redundancy provides
good insurance as many measurements can be lost before the vessel’s position
starts to become totally reliant on the DGPS.

Vessel; Installed Equipment Overview.

The system on board the vessel is designed to provide a full hardware

redundancy so 2 computer systems have been installed. Each is identical to the
other and either one is able to control the acoustic signal and display and
transmit the required information to the Cegelec system. In normal mode
however, the system would operate in the Master/slave mode. In this mode, the
master initiates the navigation commands but the transceiver replies are
received by both computers which independently calculate the vessels position.
The results are compared by each computer and an alarm is sounded if they are
different by a pre-set margin. The Operator must then decide which to take. The
master/slave designation can be changed at will by a single command.

The Sonardyne system is hard wired to the Cegelec system and digital data on
the vessels position and heading is provided in a 32 bit data byte that passes
down the data bus line between the two systems.

The expected accuracy in the combined LSBL mode would be in the order of
0.5 ft per 4,000 ft of water depth, i.e. pretty accurate.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
Introduction to Racal “Multifix” DGPS.

Summary

Racal’s ‘multifix’ Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) for mobile users
is an extremely clever way of improving the accuracy of GPS as available to
civilian users. GPS was developed for the US military and it is run by the US
Defence Dept. There are 26 GPS satellites in the system that orbit the Earth on
an elliptical polar trajectory. Imagine a peeled orange on its end comprising of
26 segments running vertically and that will give you an idea of the GPS
satellites’ polar orbits around the Earth.

For civilian use, the US Defence Dept are able to distort the GPS satellite’s
signals so their true accuracy is impaired from 1-2 metres to 50-100 metres.

Racal, in order to improve the accuracy for civilian use, have built and
commissioned 50 or so Earth stations positioned at strategic points around the
World. The positions of these Earth stations are fixed and their location is known
to the nth degree of accuracy. For a deepwater drilling operation for example
offshore Namibia, there are Earth stations at Cape Town, Pointe Noire,
somewhere in Namibia and Pointe Nolloth.

The signals from the GPS satellites ‘in view’ of the vessel and the four
aforementioned Racal Earth stations are received and an uncorrected position is
computed by the vessels and the Earth stations. The Earth stations already
know their position however so they are able to gauge the accuracy of the
current GPS fix and calculate a correction factor in order to re-establish its
military accuracy.

The Earth stations then each relay their GPS uncorrected position and their
individual correction factors to the Racal centre in Aberdeen via the ‘Inmarsat’
satellite. The Racal centre then computes the ‘network’ correction based on the
values received from the Earth stations and transmits the ‘network’ correction to
the vessel via ‘Inmarsat’. The Racal onboard computer is then able to fine tune
the original uncorrected GPS reading with the ‘network’ correction and the result
is a position fix accurate to 1-2 metres.

The position of the vessel is updated by the Racal ’Multifix’ system every 2
seconds.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
DETAIL.
For drilling operations, the Racal multifix performs 6 separate GPS calculations
every cycle:-

STEP 1.
The first step is for the mobile user, the vessel, and all the Earth stations in the
vicinity of the vessel to receive an uncorrected signal from the 4 to 6 GPS
satellites normally ‘in view’ at any one time. This uncorrected reading is 50 to
100 metres accurate. A valid Earth station is normally within 2,000 miles of the
mobile user, the designated vessel in this case.

The Doppler Effect.

GPS satellites work on the ‘Doppler’ effect to provide position fixes. The Doppler
effect describes the phenomenon whereby the frequency of a signal is seen to
decrease as the observer (Vessel) and the source (the GPS satellite) move
apart, or vice versa.

The position of the vessel can be estimated by continually recording the

‘Doppler shift’ in the frequency of the signals received from the GPS satellite
whose position is always known . A triangulation can be made of the vessel’s
`position if signals from more than one GPS satellite are received.

The ‘Doppler shift’ from each GPS satellite (normally no more than 4) is
combined with the computed 3D co-ordinates of the satellites in their elliptical
polar orbit to determine the (uncorrected) position of the vessel to within 50 -100
metres.

The Ephemeris.
The broadcast ephemeris is a list of data that is transmitted by each GPS
satellite that inform GPS users of the health and orbital position of that satellite.
The ephemeris is the main signal that is the GPS raison d’être.

For the Vessel GPS unit to work, or any GPS unit for that matter, the 3D co-
ordinates of the satellites in range are required. The orbital position of each
satellite is contained in the satellite ephemerides which allows the Vessel as
mobile user to compute the 3D co-ordinates of the satellites in range from each
ephemerides at each survey measurement interval.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
The Almanac.
Each GPS satellite also transmits an ‘almanac’ (not Old Moores Almanac) of
information on a sub carrier wave separate from the main signal wave
transmission as it follows its elliptical polar orbit about the Earth. A similar sub
carrier wave is transmitted by BBC radio stations that allow the radio in your car
to display the station name.

The ‘almanac’ includes information on all the satellites, a correction that tunes
the satellite atomic clock to the overall system clock, and atmospheric
Ionospheric and tropospheric delay parameters that refract radio wave
transmissions from their straight and true course.

Each satellite is fitted with an atomic clock that works to ‘GPS time’. GPS time
refers to Universal Time Co-ordinated (UTC) zero at 00.00 hrs on 05/06 January
1980. UTC is a uniform time system maintained by the US Naval Observatory.

There are ‘leap seconds’ that have crept in since 1980 that separate UTC time
from GPS time, hence the minor correction factor.

STEPS 2 TO 5
If step 1 has been successful, Racal multifix then computes the 4 individual
Earth station correction factors or ‘solutions’. The Earth stations read the same
signal from the GPS satellites in view as the Neddrill-1. As the Earth stations
positions are fixed and known, they are able to assess the accuracy of each of
the GPS satellites signals overhead at that time. Remember that the GPS
satellites are on a polar orbit and are not geo-stationary so the satellites
overhead at any one time will always vary. It could be that the GPS position of
the Cape Town Earth station is in fact 65 metres to the North West. The
correction factor will reflect this.

Pseudo Range.
The pseudo-range is the time taken to tie up a replica of the position code
generated in the Earth station (the receiver) with the received code (ephemeris)
from the satellite multiplied by the speed of light. This is how the GPS position of
the Earth station is compared with its true position and the lat/long error in terms
of metres and a correction factor can be computed.

STEP 6.
The Earth stations transmit via ‘Inmarsat’ their GPS computed position and their
individual correction factor or ‘solution’ to the Racal centre in Aberdeen. When it
is in receipt of all the Earth station data, the Racal centre in Aberdeen then
computes the ‘network’ solution or the final correction factor for the particular
group of 4 Earth stations in the vicinity of the Vessel. Each of the 4 Earth

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
stations’ readings are ‘weighted’ according to their relative position to the
Vessel. A ‘least squares’ solution is used to calculate the final correction factor.

The network solution is then transmitted to the Vessel Racal computer and the
raw uncorrected GPS reading is fine tuned or ‘differentiated’ to provide a
position fix that is 1 to 2 metres accurate.

RTCM.

The signal that passes to Aberdeen and back to the Vessel is defined as the
RTCM link. RTCM stands for Radio Technical Commission for Maritime services
and it defines a differential data link to relay GPS correction messages from an
Earth station (Cape Town) to a mobile user (Neddrill-1) via the Racal centre in
Aberdeen.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk
The Link With Cegelec 900 DPS System.

There are at least two Racal DGPS units on board a Vessel. The same
uncorrected GPS fix and the network correction factor solution are fed into both
units and both units in turn calculate the vessels position to 1 to 2 metres
accuracy before feeeding their fix into the Cegelec DP system. The DP operator
can, if he so chooses, switch between Racal DGPS units should one go off line
or if the DP system thinks that it is being given erroneous readings (poor
positional fix repeatability). The Racal DGPS units give the DP system the
absolute vessel position as UTM co-ordinates in digital form via a hard wired
data-bus link that exists between them.

In DP parlance, DGPS is termed. Position Measurement Equipment (PME)

along with the Sonardyne equipment. If 3 or more PME’s are selected (2 DGPS
and 2 Sonardynes for example), it is possible to use only those PME’s that fall
within a pre-determined range. The DP system does a median check to find the
middle value of the 3 or more PME’s in the X and Y plane. Any PME results that
fall outside the range are ignored and are not used to calculate the average
position of the vessel.

Al PME’s operate within a ‘window’ and this window can be used to calculate
the average. In part B however, the DP operator has pre-defined a smaller
window and the triangle symbolising a DGPS or Sonardyne reading is not used.

The DP system is also able to check the consistency of the accuracy of the
DGPS readings. This is called the ‘position fix repeatability’ and it can be used to
check DGPS performance before a unit is selected for use in the case of good
performance, or prior to de-selection in the case of poor performance. The DP
system is able therefore to do continual quality checks on both Racal DGPS
units.

As a general rule, the shorter the bars, the better the positional fix repeatability is
for the PME in question.

www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk