BeiDou Navigation Satellite System

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The BDS-3 Preliminary System Is Completed to Provide Global Services

Date:27/12/2018

On December 27, 2018, a news conference was held at the State Council Information Office, for announcing that the BDS-3 Primary System was completed to provide global services. Ran Chengqi, Director General of China Satellite Navigation Office and the spokesperson of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, made the introduction. The details are as follows: 

 

 

 

 Ladies and gentlemen, friends from the media: 

  

Good afternoon. It gives me great pleasure to attend today's press conference with my colleagues. Now, I would like to announce that the development of the BDS-3 preliminary system is completed, and the global services are provided starting today.  

 

Independently built and operated by China, BDS is a global navigation satellite system which is compatible with other global navigation satellite systems. The BDS development was initiated in 1990s. According to a three-phase development strategy, and with a roadmap of from active to passive, from regional to global, BDS-1, BDS-2, and BDS-3 systems have been developed in sequence. We have blazed a path for building a satellite navigation system with Chinese characteristics. 

 

On this date of 2012, BDS started providing services to the Asia-pacific region. Today, six years later, BDS begins to serve the whole world. Scientists and technicians participating the BDS development have always been carrying forward the BeiDou spirit of the "independent innovations, unity and collaboration, overcoming difficulties, and the pursuit of excellence", to achieve hundreds of key technology breakthroughs, to ensure the service performance in Asia-pacific stable and improved, to complete the deployment of the global core constellation, and to drive the leap of the overall aerospace capability of our nation. 

 

This year has been an extraordinary year in the BDS development history. Firstly, an intensive constellation deployment process results in the global service capability, with the completion of launching 19 satellites with 10 rockets in one year, which has set a new record in the history of the development of the world satellite navigation systems as well as the launch of a single-type Chinese vehicle. Secondly, the highly reliable operation has been maintained to ensure the stable services in the Asia-Pacific region; the backup satellites have been developed and launched; the orbit control strategies have been continuously refined; the ground system has been operated with a high stability; and the service performance has been stable and rising. Thirdly, new bright spots have been created with high standards in the international cooperation field. China successfully hosted the 13th Meeting of the United Nation’s International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems, while President Xi sent a congratulatory letter to the conference and a Provider’s Statement was issued. An inter-governmental agreement on China-Russian satellite navigation cooperation was signed. The first overseas BDS/GNSS Center was established. Fourthly, the high-precision features drive new breakthroughs in the application developments. The sales of basic products such as the BDS chips and modules exceeded 70 million pieces. The BDS high-precision products have been exported to more than 90 countries and regions. The BDS ground-based technologies and products have been used systematically overseas.  

 

Today, together with other documents, we are releasing the new BDS Open Service Performance Standard (version 2.0). After being tested and evaluated globally, the BDS service performance standards are as follows: 

  

System service coverage: global  

Positioning accuracy: 10 meters horizontal and 10 meters vertical (95% confidence level); 

Velocity accuracy: 0.2 meters per second (95% confidence level); 

Timing accuracy: 20 nanoseconds (95% confidence level); 

System service availability: better than 95%. 

  

of which in the Asia-Pacific region, the positioning accuracies are 5 meters horizontally and 5 meters vertically (95% confidence level). The BDS services are available worldwide, including the “Belt and Road” countries and regions. 

 

Here, I would like to show you two pictures (as seen on the big screen). The first one is a picture of the BDS global service availability. The lighter the color in the figure, the higher the service availability of the system. It can be seen that the BDS global service availability is all above 95%. The second is the BDS satellite sky plots at some representative areas across the globe. The red dots represent the observed BDS satellites. From now on, no matter where you go, BDS will always be with you everywhere in anytime.  

 

In the congratulatory letter to the 13th Meeting of the International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems, President Xi states that BDS has become one of the important achievements that China has made in the past 40 years of reform and opening up. BDS has been widely used in China. At the same time, BDS has marched out the country and benefited the world. Firstly, the industrial scale has continued to grow. The Chinese practitioners in the field of satellite navigation and location-based services have reached 14,000 units, employing more than 500,000 people, forming the five major industrial areas in the Pearl River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Hubei-Henan-Hunan, Sichuan-Shaanxi-Chongqing, while a number of powerful satellite navigation enterprises have grown up. The independently developed domestic BDS chips have entered the 28-nanometer category, and the total number of satellite navigation patent applications in China has reached 54,000, which is ranked first in the world. Secondly, the field of applications has been constantly expanding. Applications in transportation, marine fisheries and other fields have continued to deepen and put in effect. In China, there are 6.17 million road operating vehicles, 35,600 postal and express delivery vehicles, 80,000 buses in 36 central cities, 3,230 inland navigation facilities, and 2,960 marine navigation facilities which are using BDS. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge adopts the BDS high-precision deformation monitoring system to effectively ensure the safe operation of the bridge. The BDS-based high-altitude meteorological detection system can effectively improve the quality of the Chinese medium-term weather forecast. Most of the smartphones sold in the domestic market support the BDS positioning function. Two million passenger cars are pre-installed with the BDS-equipped intelligent vehicle terminals. The smart cars based on the BDS high-precision services are expected to be launched in 2019. Thirdly, the internationalization work achieves new breakthroughs. BDS has been serving Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Pakistan, Kuwait, and other Asian countries, Algeria, Uganda and other African countries, and many other countries such as Russia, Maldives, while BDS has made an excellent reputation. BDS has been adopted by the standards of the international organizations in the fields of civil aviation, maritime, mobile communication, etc. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has assigned the service provider’s identification number and the standard time identification identifier to the BeiDou Satellite-based Augmentation System. COSPAS/SARSAT has incorporated BDS into the global satellite search and rescue system plan to provide global users with distress alert services. For more detailed information, please refer to the "BeiDou Satellite Navigation System Typical Application Cases" and "Development of BeiDou Satellite Navigation System (version3.0)", which are available here today, and are also published at the BDS official website (www.beidou.gov.cn). 

 

For BDS, providing global services is a big step and a new starting point in the BDS development process. By 2020, 11 BDS satellites and 1 BDS-2 satellite will be launched to fully complete the BDS-3 global constellation deployment and to further improve system service performance. By 2035, with BDS as the core, a more comprehensive, more integrated and intelligent national integrated positioning, navigation and time (PNT) system will be completed. China is willing to share the BDS achievements with all countries in the world. With stronger functions and better performance, BDS will serve the world and benefit the mankind