Universal AIS, which has been adopted officially for automatic identification systems among regulated ships by SOLAS, should be installed, for example, on all passenger ships over 300 tons engaged in international voyage and over 500 tons in domestic voyage, sequentially from 2002 to 2004. We must not overlook the fact than-ruled regions by regional authorities in the case of VTS. Actually a major portion of accidents have happened in small vessels like fishing vessels. However, they are not equipped with automatic identification tools, due to the high costs of the equipment for identifying purposes, as well as the absence of regulation In this paper, we researched the alternative of automatic identification for small vessel instead of universal AIS. We analyzed the requirement of automatic identification for small vessel about wireless communication method, traffic volume, etc. We proposed the identification system for small vessels in local areas and developed the Local Vessel Identification System (LVIS) interoperable with universal AIS using a PDA platform and wireless network