"The Maritime Big Dipper" Enables China to Steer Ships Independently

From 2018 to 2020, China will be in full swing in launching its BeiDou-3 satellites. The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) represents a significant achievement in army-civilian technological integration and innovation. In the meanwhile, China is also accelerating the development of the BDS-related industries to sustain the high-quality growth of the economy and constantly satisfy the people's ever-growing demands for a better life.

"The name of the Beidou system is derived from the Big Dipper. The reason why it is chosen is that the name exhibits Chinese Characteristics and dovetails nicely with navigation." Yesterday the reporter interviewed Professor Cheng Jianhua from Harbin Engineering University (HEU), head of the satellite navigation and control technology research team, whose development of "marine navigation positioning terminal" can control its positioning error within one meter .

China-made BeiDou, apart from GPS, has been put into use in our life.

"When it comes to navigation, the word "GPS" would spring to our mind, namely, the global positioning system built by the United States, which has been often used as a synonym for satellite navigation systems." said Cheng Jianhua. Actually, there are four global satellite navigation systems so far: GPS of the United States, GLONASS of Russia, Galileo of the European Union as well as BDS independently developed by China. The BDS has long been put into use in our daily life.

According to Cheng Jianhua, the satellite navigation system consists of three parts including navigation satellites, ground stations and user positioning equipment. "The BDS has its advantage over the GPS in stronger signals with more satellites.” said Cheng Jianhua. By 2020, there will have been 35 BeiDou satellites launched to offer navigation services, with signals covering every corner of the earth.

"A lot of people are unfamiliar with the BDS, but actually it has been applied in our daily life." said Cheng Jianhua. For example, most Huawei mobile phones receive signals transmitted by the BDS, and Iphone begins to be compatible with the BDS too.

Collect 2,880 data every day for 10 years for establishment of the "database"

The team led by Professor Cheng focus on the studies of marine positioning and navigation in the BeiDou Satellite Navigation System. Since the team was organized in 2002, it has conducted scientific research in such fields as Precision satellite navigation and positioning, deep integrated navigation, satellite attitude control and etc., satisfying our country's significant strategic needs to develop marine engineering and National Defense.

"At the very beginning, our team stayed all day long on board the ship to collect the relevant data." said Cheng Jianhua, "I remembered that on the day when we went to sea, we encountered terrifying waves." Their ship "almost collided with" another ship next to them and narrowly escaped being capsized. "That was an unforgettable experience in our whole life and none of us has ever told our families about it for fear that they would be concerned about our safety."

According to Cheng Jianhua, the team gathered 2,880 data every day and collected more than 200 databases throughout the world within the 10 years. "With all these efforts, we successfully built our own 'marine database', hence formulating a more accurate error correction model that enables the wide-area differential positioning of the single Beidou mode to reach the accuracy of less than 1 meter.

The High-precision BDS Marine Wide Area Differential Positioning Terminal developed by HEU is leading the nation

Guided by the development plan of world-class universities and disciplines, the team, after years of research and development, successfully gained the support from many national and provincial major projects related to the BDS including the National Natural Science Fund's key project of "the autonomous safety navigation theory and key Technology for deep-sea space station in polar regions "; "Global satellite differential positioning system", which is a special project for high-tech ship innovation of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and etc.

"At present, only our research team is committed to this high-precision marine wide area differential positioning terminal with the BDS throughout China. And this terminal system is mainly applied to high-end shipping industries such as oil exploitation, laying pipelines, searching and salvaging, and offshore wind power.  "With the working mode using only the BDS, we succeed in breaking the monopoly of western countries in this field who have their GPS. Relying on Harbin Hatran Navigation Technology Co., Ltd., the team will move forward to develop more high-end products with the BDS to serve maritime purposes, so as to make contributions to China's development in Marine Engineering and National defense." said Cheng Jianhua.

Source: www.xindemarinenews.com