With the development of intelligent shipping ports, many port-related tools — gantry cranes, loaders and forklifts — can be made autonomous and controlled automatically. These applications use GNSS to obtain positioning and orientation data for machine operators.
In traditional container-intensive terminals, forklift drivers spend a lot of time locating the designated goods; operating the forklift itself requires highly experienced drivers. Tersus GNSS offers a positioning and orientation solution that can greatly reduce the need for experienced drivers, improve the port’s operational efficiency, reduce error rates and improve accuracy.
Installed on an autonomous forklift, a David Plus receiver and anti-interference GNSS dual antenna calculates positioning solutions, enabling operators to locate exactly where the target goods are and guide the forklift to them via the quickest, most convenient routes.
The David Plus’s compact design can be easily installed on even small forklifts without affecting normal operation. The David Plus obtains high-precision positioning and orientation values by connecting via wireless to an Ntrip network, and then forwards corrections to the port-dispatching system as raw data.
The David Plus supports GPS L1/L2, GLONASS L1/L2 and BeiDou B1/B2 from the primary antenna, and GPS L1/GLONASS L1 or GPS L1/BeiDou B1 from the secondary antenna. Its 384 channels can capture numerous satellite signals within a short time.
Image: Tersus GNSS
With an IP67-rated enclosure, the David Plus GNSS receiver is built for outdoor environments such as shipping ports. A palm-sized unit, it can be easily integrated with various application systems. As a backup data-saving measure, 4 gigabytes of built-in memory record data for post-processing.
A manned forklift can benefit from the positioning data. When the forklift reaches the designated position in the stack, the heading antenna will calculate the correct lift height of the forklift arm. This provides a suitable height for handling the cargo, and prevents accidents such as the cargo falling.
For a fully autonomous forklift, the system will automatically analyze the orientation data and lift the forklift arm to the corresponding height of the cargo. It will then retrieve and lower the cargo to a safe height, and automatically drive it to the new storage point. During this process, additional infrared obstacle avoidance sensors can accurately identify the distance between the forklift and the cargo, avoiding inadvertent collisions.
The positioning and orientation data obtained by the David Plus can be shared with third-party software and hardware. For instance, port terminal systems can configure containers to capture distribution information and instructions. By importing the positioning information of the forklift equipped with David Plus into the system in real time, it is possible to calculate the optimal driving trajectory to the final cargo delivery point.
The Tersus David Plus positioning and orientation solution can combine its own high-precision positioning and orientation data with other automation system hardware and software to form a complete forklift unmanned/manned automated driving and handling solution.
Four new satellites of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) have passed tests in orbit and joined the system to provide positioning, navigation and timing services, according to China news service Xinhuanet.
The four satellites include the 47th, 48th, 52nd and 53rd satellites of the BDS family, according to China’s Satellite Navigation System Management Office.
All of them, operating in medium Earth orbit, were developed by the China Academy of Space Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
The 47th and 48th BDS satellites were launched on Sept. 23, 2019, and the 52nd and 53rd BDS satellites were launched on Dec. 16, 2019.
Two to the Last. The China Satellite Navigation System Management Office said the last two Beidou-3 satellite launches will take place in March and May, and complete the Beidou system.
China began to construct its navigation system, named after the Chinese term for the Big Dipper constellation, in the 1990s and started serving the Asia-Pacific Region in 2012.
Over the past two years, China has successfully sent 28 BDS-3 satellites and two BDS-2 satellites into orbit.
China plans to launch more BDS satellites in March and May to complete the global network.
Yang Changfeng, Chief Architect, BeiDou Navigation Satellite System. (Photo: BeiDou)
By Yang Changfeng Chief Architect, BeiDou Navigation Satellite System
As one of the core Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) providers, the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (“BDS”) has been developed steadily following a three-step strategy. BDS has been providing global services since the end of 2018. By around 2020, the BDS-3 system will be entirely completed to provide global users with free, open and high-quality navigation, positioning, timing, short message communication and other services. A more ubiquitous, integrated and intelligent positioning, navigation, timing system will be built before 2035.
In 2019, BDS has progressed with regard to aspects of system construction, integrated applications and international development.
System Construction
Accelerating Satellite Deployment. From January to November 2019, three BDS-3 satellites in inclined geosynchronous satellite orbit (IGSO) and four satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO) were launched, and one IGSO satellite has completed in-orbit tests, to further improve the global system constellation.
The last two MEO satellites are planned to be launched by the end of 2019, marking the completion of the BDS core global constellation deployment. By June 2020, another two GEO satellites will be launched, and the full deployment of the BDS-3 system will be completed.
Ground System Construction. In 2019, 12 new ground operation and control stations (including one uplink station and 11 class-II monitoring stations) have been built, to complete the satellite-ground joint debug and integration tests, and the overall operation of the system is stable.
By the end of October 2019, 34 BDS satellites are operating in orbit to provide services to global users, including 15 BDS-2 satellites and 19 BDS-3 satellites.
Improving Service Performance
Key Service Areas. In May 2019, the last BDS-2 backup satellite was launched to further improve the performance in the key service areas of the BDS-2 system. As the BDS-3 satellites go into operation, the accuracy and availability of the BDS B1I and B3I signals, in the BDS-2service area, has been improved by about 30% and 5% respectively, compared with that of solely relying on the BDS-2 system.
Global Service Areas. The BDS B1I and B3I service areas have been expanded from the Asia Pacific region to the world, and the accuracy and availability have been further improved. With the condition of PDOP ≤6, the availability is better than 99% in most regions all over the world (in parts of the United States, better than 97%). In the global area, the mean value of the actual measured positioning accuracy is about 3.6m horizontally and 6.6m vertically, velocity measurement accuracy is about 0.05m/s, and timing accuracy is about 9.8 nanoseconds (95% confidence). So far, the BDS-3 new signals, B1C and B2a, have possessed service capacity worldwide. The system availability is better than 87%, in the condition of PDOP ≤ 6. The mean value of the actual measured positioning accuracy is about 2.4m horizontally and 4.3m vertically, velocity measurement accuracy is about 0.06m/s and timing accuracy is about 19.9 nanoseconds (95% confidence).
Building of the Featured Capacity. The BDS/GNSS ground based augmentation system has been providing basic services. It consists of 155 framework reference stations and nearly 2,200 regional stations in China. The system has carried out high-precision applications in many fields, such as surveying and mapping, land resources, earthquake, transportation and meteorology. Its basic services include real-time positioning at the meter, decimeter and centimeter level, as well as precise post-processing positioning at the millimeter level.
The BeiDou Satellite-Based Augmentation System (BDSBAS) is being developed in accordance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards to provide navigation services with superior accuracy and integrity. In 2019, the first GEO satellite with the BDSBAS payload has been tested in orbit and the satellite is in good condition.
Integrated Applications
As the system construction accelerates, BDS is also making great efforts to strengthen the development of the fundamental products and applications in various fields. The integrated applications adopt the “BDS+” model to stimulate the growth of satellite navigation industry.
Fundamental Products. At present, the fundamental BDS products have been used in such areas as mass market applications, of which the performance has reached or is close-to the world-class level. The development of full-frequency integrated high-precision chips is near its completion, and the performance of the BDS chips will improve further. By the end of 2019, BDS navigation chips, modules and antennas have been exported to more than 100 countries and regions. In 2018, the domestic output value was more than RMB 300 billion (US$43 billion), in which the BDS contribution exceeds 80%.
Industrial Applications. BDS has been widely used in various fields — communication and transportation, public security, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, hydrological monitoring, meteorological forecast, time synchronization, power dispatching, disaster prevention and mitigation — generating significant economic and social benefits. In the field of transportation, by September 2019, more than 6.47 million road operating vehicles and 42,300 postal and express delivery vehicles in China are using BDS, and the world’s largest dynamic supervision system of operating vehicles has been formed, which effectively improved management efficiency and road transportation safety.
In agriculture, a BDS-based automatic driving system has been equipped on more than 20,000 sets of agricultural machinery and equipment, saving 50% of the labor cost. The BDS-based agricultural machinery operation supervision platform and the IoT platform has been serving 10 million units of agricultural machinery equipment, greatly improving management and operational efficiency.
In disaster prevention and mitigation, a tri-level platform covering the national ministry, the provinces, and cities and counties has been built to offer six-tier application services, with more than 45,000 terminals using BDS. The BDS/GNSS high-precision technologies have been applied in the field of geological disaster monitoring, while the landslides in Gansu province have been successfully forecast repeatedly, with time accuracy at the second level and deformation accuracy at the millimeter level.
Mass Market Applications. The BDS-based navigation and positioning services have been adopted by various enterprises in the fields of e-commerce, smart mobile terminal manufacture, location-based services (LBS), the sharing economy and the mass market, thereby changing people’s production and life style profoundly. Mainstream manufacturers in China and around the world have introduced BDS-compatible chips that integrate communication and navigation functions.
According to Chinese market statistics, in the third quarter of 2019, 151 types of mobile phones applying for license have positioning functions, among which 110 models support BDS. Using BDS/GNSS ground based augmentation stations, the spatial-temporal services including centimeter-level positioning, millimeter-level perception and nanometer-level timing services can be provided, while the accelerated positioning services cover 220 countries and regions with more than 390 million global users.
International Development
Bilateral Cooperation. BDS continues to carry out bilateral cooperation with other navigation satellite systems, to promote compatibility and joint applications. China and the United States have set up joint working groups in areas such as compatibility and interoperability, augmentation systems and civil services to continuously develop cooperation and exchanges.
China and the EU set up a technical working group on the compatibility and interoperability between the BDS and Galileo systems to carry out coordination, exchanges and cooperation, under the framework of the China-EU space cooperation dialogue and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The agreement between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the Russian Federation on Cooperation in the Field of the Use of BeiDou and GLONASS for Peaceful Purposes has come into effect.
In August 2019, China and the Russian Federation held their sixth bilateral meeting in Kazan, Russia, signed the site survey certificate of GNSS monitoring stations, and achieved many cooperation results. In addition, the bilateral cooperation with Iraq, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia has also been steadily promoted.
Multilateral Cooperation. During the 62nd session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) in June 2019, an exhibition on ancient Chinese navigation technologies was held at the Vienna International Center with the theme “From Compass to BeiDou,” which vividly demonstrated China’s brilliant achievements in timing, mapping, cartography and navigation science and technology. In April and October, 2019, the second China-Arab States BDS Cooperation Forum and China-Central Asia BDS cooperation forum were held in Tunis and Nanning, China, respectively, to promote the BDS to serve the Arab region and Central Asian countries.
The BDS Overseas Applications Were Steadily Promoted. With BDS high-precision products being exported, BDS has been widely used in different regions and fields, such as land registration, precision agriculture, warehouse logistics in ASEAN countries, construction in Western Asia, airport timing and piling at seas in South Asia, electric power inspection in Eastern Europe, and land survey in African countries. As BDS-3 system continues to improve construction, it will provide quality services for more people in a wider area.
Ratification of BDS by International Standards. BDS has made a clear schedule to be ratified by the ICAO standards in 2020. It has formulated 26 standards in the field of international mobile communication based on the BDS B1I signal, and other standards based on the B1C and B2a signals are being developed. A receiver positioning result output protocol (NMEA0183) and a receiver data exchange format (RINEX 3.04) supporting BDS are to be released. Technical parameters and index information of BDS search and rescue (SAR) payloads are included in relevant COSPAS-SARSAT documents, and the development and in-orbit test of the first batch of SAR payload has been completed. The first BDS standard in the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has been developed and approved and is expected to be released in June 2020.
Future Plans
After BDS achieves global service capabilities by 2020, it will further improve global navigation, positioning, timing and regional short-message communication services, and finalize global short-message communication, international search and rescue, satellite-based augmentation, precise point positioning, and other service capabilities. China’s BDS will contribute Chinese solutions to the world, and give full play of its role, with a renewed attitude, stronger capabilities and better services, to serve the world and benefit humankind.
China sends two BeiDou satellites into space a Nov. 23. (Photo: Guo Wenbin/Xinhua)
China launched two satellites of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province at 8:55 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 23.
Launched on a Long March-3B carrier rocket and the Yuanzheng-1 (Expedition-1) upper stage attached to the carrier rocket, the two satellites have entered their planned orbits. They are the 50th and 51st satellites of the BDS satellite family.
The two medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites are also network satellites of the BeiDou-3 system.
The two new satellites, the carrier rocket and Yuanzheng-1 were all developed by the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
The launch was the 319th mission for the Long March series carrier rockets.
China sent a new satellite of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province at 17:43:04.482 UTC on Nov. 5.
Launched on a Long March-3B carrier rocket, it is the 49th satellite of the BDS satellite family and the 24th satellite of the BDS-3 system.
It also marked that a total of three BDS-3 satellites have been sent into the inclined geosynchronous Earth orbit.
The launch was the 317th mission for the Long March series of carrier rockets.
The new satellites and the carrier rocket were developed by the China Academy of Space Technology and the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
China will launch another six BDS-3 satellites to complete the BDS global network.
A new BeiDou satellite is launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on Nov. 5. (Photo: Liu Xu/Xinhua)
China has launched two more BeiDou III satellites. The launch took place on Sunday, Sept. 22, using a Long March 3B rocket which lifted off from the Xichang space center at 2110 GMT (5:10 p.m. EDT), according to the Xinhua News Agency.
About four hours after liftoff, the upper stage delivered the Beidou satellites into a nearly circular orbit with an average altitude of 13,500 miles (21,800 kilometers) and an inclination of 55 degrees.
The satellites were produced by the China Academy of Space Technology, a government-owned satellite builder.
With Sunday’s launch, China has added five new satellites to the Beidou network this year, halfway to its stated goal of 10 Beidou satellites this year.
The satellites are the 47th and 48th spacecraft launched in the Beidou navigation program.
China’s super-thin rubidium atomic clock, which is just 17 millimeters thick, has been put into mass production, according to Xinhua News Agency.
The clock, developed in 2018 by a research institute under the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. Ltd, (CASIC) is the key to the positioning and timing accuracy of BeiDou navigation satellites.
In 2015, Chinese scientists developed a rubidium clock that is tiny enough to fit in the palm of your hand but was almost 40 millimeters thick. The new clock, with a length of 76 millimeters and width of 76 millimeters, is only 17 millimeters thick.
Compared with the previous generation, the new clock is smaller in size but performs better. It adopts a plug-in design, making it easy to insert and remove on circuit board. With stronger resistance to high temperatures, it can work at 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit).
In addition, it has a taming function, enabling the clock to be automatically recognized and tamed by the pulse per second (PPS) signal provided by navigation satellite systems, improving the accuracy of local frequency.
The clock can be used in fields such as aviation, aerospace and telecommunications. According to its developers, the ultra-accurate clock will have a broader market prospect in the future.
Atomic clocks are the most accurate time and frequency standards. They use vibrations of atoms to measure time. Due to its small size, low cost and high reliability, rubidium clock is the most widely produced atomic clock.
A large number of self-developed rubidium and hydrogen atomic clocks have been carried by satellites that provide accurate positioning for China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System.
The atomic clocks are the workhorses that send synchronized signals so sat-nav receivers can triangulate their position on Earth.
China began to construct the BDS in the 1990s. The system started serving China with its BDS-1 satellites in 2000 and started serving the Asia-Pacific region with its BDS-2 satellites in 2012. China will complete the BDS global network by 2020.
China’s National Reference Station Network. (Image: BeiDou)
A Russian law was approved July 26 that sets forth cooperation between Russia and China on using GLONASS and BeiDou for peaceful purposes.
According to the RosCosmos website, the law was approved at a meeting of the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. The law is officially named, “On ratification of the agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on cooperation in the use of GLONASS and Beidou global navigation satellite systems for peaceful purposes.”
An intergovernmental agreement was signed on Nov. 7, 2018, in Beijing during the 23rd regular meeting of the heads of government of Russia and China. The agreement creates an institutional and legal framework for cooperation in the development and manufacture of civil navigation equipment using GLONASS and Beidou systems.
It also establishes cooperation in the development of Russian-Chinese standards for the application of navigation technologies using both systems — in particular, standards for the control and management of traffic flows across the Russian-Chinese border. The border is 4,200 kilometers (2,615.5 miles) long — world’s sixth-longest international border.
Under the agreement, the two countries plan to place in their own countries measuring stations for the other country’s GNSS, on a reciprocal basis.
Seven-ninths of the way there! The 21st satellite of the BeiDou-3 global constellation, destined to number 27 upon completion, successfully launched from Xichang on June 24. Once in final orbit and commissioned, it will become the second of three planned inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO) satellites, traipsing in figure-eight loops across the skies above China and neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region.
The IGSO trio will play a key role in the expansion of BeiDou-3 from a regional to a global system, in that they may afford the Asia-Pacific region greater BeiDou-derived accuracy and availability — the so-called “optimized coverage” — than will be accessible to users of the constellation in other areas of the world.
The new satellite, like others of its latest generation, will establish inter-satellite ranging links, and carries new-gun rubidium atomic clocks and passive hydrogen maser clocks. It weighs 450 kg, a gain over previous generations, with a phased array antenna for navigation signals, a laser retroreflector and deployable S/L-band and C-band antennas.
While BeiDou-3 has widespread applications in construction, transportation, fishing, power grid, disaster response, public security, smart cities and more, it will also bring increased capability — and independence from GPS — to the People’s Liberation Army. At 2 million strong with modernizing equipment, this is a force to be reckoned with in an increasingly unsettled region, with China actively pursuing numerous territorial disputes.
BeiDou-3 is migrating its civil or B1 signal from 1561.098 MHz to 1575.42 MHz, the same as the GPS L1 and Galileo E1, and changing from a quadrature phase shift keying modulation to a multiplexed binary offset carrier modulation similar to Galileos E1 and the pending GPS L1C.
When I was a kid, two of my hometown’s burger drive-ins attracted the hungry attention of my sister and myself, causing us to hound our parents to take us “out to dinner” upon the slightest pretext. Only one of them, however, boasted a sign claiming “400 million served.”
This was a staggering number to an eight-year-old. I hypothesized that everyone in the world must have consumed several by now — a very good argument for me to have one tonight.
The desire to provoke similar reasoning could form part of the motivation for the China Satellite Navigation Office to announce that sales of BeiDou-based chips have exceeded 80 million. Ran Chengqi, director of the CSNO, delivered the number in a report on the 10th China Satellite Navigation Conference held in Beijing on May 22.
“It would be stretching a point to say that satnav chips are the burgers of the future, but it’s not an exaggeration to assert that they are becoming a commodity on the world market.”
Now, 80 million falls short of 400 million, but that next hurdle is well within reach, considering the size, potential and explosive growth of the Chinese market, to say nothing of others along the Great Belt and Road, a global development area of infrastructure development and investments in 152 countries and organizations in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
The BeiDou number pales in comparison to the 3.15 billion units of total GNSS chips that global consumption is expected to hit in 2022. By a reasonable projection, BeiDou-enabled chips will by then constitute a major if not the lion’s share of that number.
Of course, GPS-enabled chips will form a greater majority, if not the totality. All chips will — unless the world radically changes — be GPS-enabled to start, and then have some combination of other GNSS in addition.
Big Numbers. Ran Chengqi further said that 22-nanometer dual-frequency BeiDou chips are ready for commercial applications.
According to the China Global Television Network, 116 new positioning-capable cellphone models applied to enter the Chinese market in the first quarter of 2019; 82 of them carry BeiDou-enabled chips. The latest government report on the scale of China’s satnav industry anticipates it will reach 400 billion yuan (US$ 57.8 billion) by 2020.
The news agency stated that more than six million vehicles in 36 cities use BeiDou; long-distance operations and precision farming help raise output by 5% while saving 10% of fuel costs; and more than 70,000 fishing vessels employ BeiDou’s short messaging service.
BeiDou’s rapid success in a relatively short term echoes that of GPS and GNSS in general. It would be stretching a point to say that satnav chips are the burgers of the future, but it’s not any exaggeration or distortion to assert that they are becoming — if they have not already become — a commodity on the world market.
By the way, those golden arches have since 1994 stopped counting and updating their published burger tally. All the signs simply say “billions and billions served.”
China launched another BeiDou satellite into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province at 10:41 p.m. April 20, according to Xinhua.
The inclined geosynchronous Earth orbit (IGEO) satellite was launched on a Long March-3B carrier rocket. It is the 44th satellite of the BDS satellite family and the first BDS-3 satellite in inclined geosynchronous Earth orbit.
After in-orbit tests, the satellite will work with 18 other BDS-3 satellites in intermediate circular orbit and another IGEO satellite.
Yang Changfeng, chief designer of the BeiDou system, told Xinhua that the hybrid constellation design will increase the number of visible satellites in the Asia-Pacific region.
According to Yang, the positioning accuracy of the system has reached 10 meters globally and five meters in the Asia-Pacific Region after the system started to provide global service at the end of last year.
The BDS has been widely used around the world, such as in building construction in Kuwait, precision agriculture in Myanmar, land survey and mapping in Uganda and warehousing and logistics in Thailand.
About 8-10 BDS satellites are scheduled to be launched this year, wrapping up launch missions of all BDS-3 satellites in medium Earth orbit. The BDS-3 system is to be completed in 2020.
China is also planning to finish building a high-precision national comprehensive positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) system based on BeiDou by 2035.
China’s National Reference Station Network. (Image: BeiDou)
The second China-Arab States BDS Cooperation Forum, held April 1 in Tunis, Tunisia, covered measures and initiatives that will increase the use of China’s Beidou navigation satellite system (BDS) in the Arab world. The aim is to establish a Space Silk Road that elevates cooperation in high-technology between China and the Middle East and North Africa, reports spacewatch global.
The forum concluded that increased BDS use in the Arab world, as well as technological cooperation with China, could be achieved by establishing the Space Silk Road.
By formally establishing a Silk Road conceptual theme, forum participants believe that Arab countries will step up their use of BDS for everything ranging from precision agriculture and maritime domain awareness to disaster management and telecommunications.
“The BDS cooperation is the best example for the strategic cooperation between China and Arab states, as satellite navigation integrates many high-tech areas, including telecommunication and space technologies,” said Slim Khalbous, Tunisia’s minister for higher education and scientific research in an address to the forum. “This is an important opportunity for Tunisia, while the BDS cooperation also means the further upgrade of the China-Arab relations.”
“Satellite navigation has provided many conveniences and benefits for us, and we are determined to push forward with our cooperation,” said Mohamed Ben Amor, secretary-general of the Arab Information and Communication Technologies Organization (AICTO), in the forum’s opening speech.
Amor added that the establishment of the China-Arab States BDS/GNNS Centre in Tunis in 2018 is an important step in increasing Sino-Arab cooperation in satellite positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) applications through BDS.
Kamal Hassen Ali, assistant secretary general of the Arab League in charge of economic affairs, celebrated the burgeoning cooperation between China and Arab states. “The size of our cooperation will grow bigger, as the China-Tunisia cooperation has borne many fruits, and it will achieve greater progress in other countries in the region too.,” Ali said.
The China-Arab States BDS Cooperation Forum is a multilateral initiative for promoting cooperation and exchanges between China and Arab states in the field of satellite navigation within the framework of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum. The first forum was held in Shanghai, China, in May 2017.
