NMEA and Air Surveillance Simulator

Simulates NMEA and SBS data via TCP/UDP connections.

General hint: Some field are rotated within their valid range; without any kind of validation to corresponding other fields. This means, numerical they should be all correct; semantically there might be no relationship between them.

Recommended Requirements

• Java 11
• Maven 3.8.4

These version are always recommended; no guarantee, that older versions are compatible.

Supported sentences

ADSB

Simulates SBS data: MSG-Messages with subtypes 1, 3 and 4

Source

AIS

Simulates AIS data: Message types: 1 and 5

Source

GPS

Simulates NMEA based $GPRMC and $GPGGA messages.

Source 1 Source 2

RADAR

Simulates NMEA based $RATTM messages.

Source

WEATHER

Simulates NMEA based $WIMDA messages.

Source

COURSE

Simulates NMEA based $GPHDT and $HEHDT messages.

Source

How to build

mvn clean package

How to start

Either execute the file start.bat or use the following command

java -DlogPath="." -Dlogback.configurationFile="logback.xml" -jar simulator.jar

While starting this program, the simulator expects the file config.xml relative to itself.

Configuration

The content of config.xml must have the following structure

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configs>
	<config type="adsb"    sink="tcp" active="true"  ip="" port="10300" nroftrack="1" />
	<config type="ais"     sink="tcp" active="false" ip="" port="10200" nroftrack="1" sleeptime="600000" />
	<config type="radar"   sink="tcp" active="false" ip="" port="10400" />
	<config type="gps"     sink="udp" active="true" ip="192.168.2.100" port="10500" />
	<config type="weather" sink="tcp" active="false" ip="" port="10600" />
	<config type="course"  sink="tcp" active="false" ip="" port="10700" />
</configs>

where

• type equals to a stream type. Possible values: adsb, ais, gps, radar, weather
• sink equals to a sink type. Possible values: tcp, udp
• active is the flag, to decide, if this stream is active or not. Possible values: true, false
• ip is used in case of sink=udp and is the target address.
• port is the TCP-Socket-Port or in case of sink=udp the target port.
• nroftracks equals to the number of generated tracks.
• sleeptime is the length of the time break, when an AIS route is reinitialized again

Advices:

• General advices:

  • The simulator checks every 15s, if the file config.xml was modified (based on MD5 hash). In case of changes, the configuration file is reloaded automatically.
  • It is recommended, that the IP-Address should be set with the default IPv4 structure x.x.x.x.

• Advices for gps:

  • If radar or weather are active, gps will be automatically activated as well (in this case the active-flag of gps will be ignored).
  • The variable nroftrack will be ignored. GPS sentences correspond just to a single object.

• Advices for radar:

  • The variable nroftrack will be ignored.
  • The simulator handles a list of fixed positions of track objects.
  • RATTM-messages are generated, if the GPS position is close enough to the stored track objects.

• Advices for weather:

  • The variable nroftrack will be ignored.
  • We expect, that produced weather sentences correspond to current GPS position.

Changelog

2022-01-16 : V1.0.10

• fix bug of descarding messages based on too small queue size
• Recommended version of Maven is now 3.8.4
• Update Logback to 1.2.10 (Log4Shell fixes)
• Update maven-jar-plugin to 3.2.2
• Update maven-compiler-plugin 3.9.0

2021-10-09 : V1.0.9

• add sleeptime for AIS streams
• adapt printing stream information
• refactoring of radar track messages
• integrate version information in jar file
• Recommended version of Maven is now 3.8.2
• add some unit tests
• add speed and course for radar tracks

2021-08-21 : V1.0.8

• Make simulator compatible with OpenJDK 11

2021-07-28 : V1.0.7

• add navStatus, course and trueHeading for AIS-Message 1
• add posFixType for AIS-Message 5
• add some unit tests

2021-07-11 : V1.0.6

• add ETA for AIS tracks
• fix bug, where \r\n at udp packages is missing
• fix bug, where the checksum is missing at GPHDT messages
• update dependencies

2021-03-13 : V1.0.5

• add more ships
• fix wrong timezone in timestamp of gps and radar
• fix bug of wrong ais callsign
• fix bug of missing ais ship name

2021-02-15 : V1.0.4

• Add course information (Gphdt and Hehdt)

2020-11-17 : V1.0.3

• Add course, speed and gphdt message for GPS

2021-11-14 : V1.0.2

• Optimization of radar plots

2021-02-15 : V1.0.1

• Add course information (Gphdt and Hehdt)

2020-10-27 : V1.0

• Initial version

CopyRight

(c) Alexander Buechel, [email protected], December 2021