China has the ambition to become a major player in the highly lucrative satellite navigation market. The country’s self-developed Beidou navigation tech is eyeing fast development in industrial applications as it continues to expand its presence globally.
China officially commissioned BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) to open the new BDS-3 system to global users. It is now operating alongside three other systems: GPS of the United States; Galileo of the European Union; and GLONASS of Russia.
The system offers positioning, navigation, and timing services, among others. It has applications in various public sectors such as transportation, disaster relief and mitigation, agriculture, and forestry. The company will finish installing and upgrading BDS terminals on 1,000 buses in the provincial capital.
The company can more accurately gain the operation mileage statistics and know the real-time position of the vehicles with the high-precision positioning. It has also developed a new pervasive sensor equipped with Beidou technology that is changing the traditional ways of disaster monitoring. The navigation system provides more accurate location and time information to work out the speed and acceleration of a landslide. The additional data can allow for more precise judgment.
According to data by the China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC), at present, more than 7 million commercial vehicles, about 36,300 postal and delivery vehicles, and 350 aircraft in China have been equipped with BDS. BDS has also empowered the self-driving system of more than 45,000 pieces of agricultural machinery nationwide.
Currently, this navigation technology has been applied in land mapping, precision agriculture, and smart ports in regions including ASEAN, South Asia, Eastern Europe, West Asia, and Africa. China will continue to make a contribution to the world and promote the prosperity, coexistence and competitive development of the global satellite navigation industry,” He said.
BDS-related industries are eyeing new opportunities this year, as it has been listed in China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for national economic and social development and the long-range objectives through the year 2035.
As reported by OpenGov Asia, the Beidou project began to serveChina in 2000. Since 2000, 33 satellites have been launched for the network. Beidou began serving users in the Asia-Pacific region in December 2012. It is the world’s fourth navigation satellite system. The country has already launched eight Beidou-3 satellites. The satellites provided initial services for countries and regions along the Belt and Road by the end of the year.
Beidou system was moving to become a global service provider after offering stable and reliable time and space information for clients in the Asia-Pacific region. Compared to earlier generation satellites, the Beidou-3 can send signals that are more compatible with other satellite navigation systems and provide satellite-based augmentation, as well as search and rescue services in accordance with international standards. Its positioning accuracy has reached 2.5 to 5 meters.
According to a page, BDS has been independently constructed and operated by China with an eye on the needs of the country’s national security and economic and social development. As a temporal-spatial infrastructure of national significance, the BDS provides all-time, all-weather and high-accuracy positioning, navigation and timing services to global users.
BDS has been serving national significant infrastructures, thereby resulting in remarkable economic and social benefits. Besides public sectors, the BDS-based navigation services have been widely adopted by e-commerce enterprises, manufacturers of intelligent mobile terminals and location-based services providers, which have extensively entered into the fields of mass consumption, share economies, and those related to people’s livelihood.
New modes, business forms and the economy of the BDS applications are emerging, profoundly changing people’s production and life. China will continue to promote the BDS applications and industrial development to serve the country’s modernisation construction and daily life of the people. This technology will make contributions to the global scientific, technological, economic and social development.
