In the early 1990s, the International Association of Maritime Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA) first proposed the development of a universal shipborne system to improve the maritime safety and efficiency of navigation, and to help protect the marine environment. Subsequent to that proposal, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the ITU, and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) adopted a new navigation system now known as the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to help achieve these goals. The primary purpose of the AIS is to facilitate the efficient exchange of navigational data between ships and between ships and shore stations to significantly improve safety of navigation and promote improved control and monitoring of maritime events. The technical characteristics of the current AIS system using time division multiple access (TDMA) techniques in the VHF maritime mobile band are described in detail in Recommendation ITU-R M.1371.