Technology Report

August 31, 2026

sMRT SHIELD+

HAMBURG — A personal locator beacon usually does one thing. It shouts to a satellite and waits. Wescom Group says the sMRT SHIELD+ does three. It calls the global rescue system. It calls ships nearby. And it can light up to tell the wearer the satellite heard the call.

Wescom will show the beacon at SMM, the Hamburg marine fair, September 1–4. sMRT is the electronics brand of Marine Rescue Technologies Limited, a Wescom company in Anlaby, East Yorkshire. The company presents the SHIELD+ as the first beacon on the Cospas-Sarsat 406 MHz network to combine that global alert with two-way digital selective calling. That “first” is Wescom’s claim.

Cospas-Sarsat is the international satellite system that listens for 406 MHz distress beacons. Digital selective calling, or DSC, is a VHF radio method ships use to ring each other with a digital distress. AIS, the Automatic Identification System, is the tracking broadcast that paints a position on a nearby chart plotter. Return Link Service, or RLS, is a short message back through Galileo. Cospas-Sarsat says an RLS-enabled beacon can show that the alert was received, located, and passed to government authorities. It does not mean a rescue has been launched.

Wescom says nearby vessels get an extra distress alert and an AIS location, and that the wearer can receive an acknowledgment. The sMRT product page lists 406 MHz, VHF DSC, and AIS in one compact unit, plus GPS and Galileo receivers, a 121.5 MHz homing transmitter, a strobe, an audible alarm, and a five-year battery. Those are manufacturer claims. The page is still marked Coming Soon.

The same page lists Class-M compliance with European decision ECC/DEC/(22)02, the rule for man-overboard devices. It describes visual notices through a DSC receiver and through RLS.

Wescom will also preview a SHIELD+ emergency position-indicating radio beacon, the float-free ship version, for early 2027. The company says that EPIRB will be the first fully compliant IMO MSC.471(101) beacon to put DSC, AIS, infrared, and Galileo RLS in one unit. MSC.471(101) is the IMO performance standard for float-free 406 MHz EPIRBs. That “first” is Wescom’s description. Boatnews describes the infrared as another way to find the beacon in the last phase of a search, and notes that published materials do not yet give DSC or AIS range, or the EPIRB price.