Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

"'GPS signal is weak', you can use China Beidou."

There has always been a joke on the Internet: what will happen to the world if the United States shuts down GPS?

On July 23, 1993, the Persian Gulf was clear. The Chinese freighter Galaxy is carrying out the transportation task, and its navigation system is the GPS of the United States. On the grounds that there were contraband on board, the United States asked the Galaxy to suspend its voyage and accept the United States to board the ship to inspect the cargo.

The United States then unilaterally shut down the Galaxy's GPS. The Milky way was lost on the high seas and drifted for dozens of days in spite of a high temperature of 50 degrees. In the end, the United States boarded the ship twice for inspection, and after confirming that there was no contraband on board the Galaxy, it floated away and refused to apologize.

The Galaxy incident made our country understand that without a satellite navigation system, there would be no independence of military capabilities, and it would be impossible to swallow without a broken tooth.

In 1994, the state approved the establishment of the Beidou-1 project immediately; in 2000, the first satellite of Beidou-1 was launched into space from Daliangshan; in 2020, the last satellite of Beidou-3 was successfully launched in Xichang, and the Beidou navigation system was officially networked.

The last satellite of Beidou 3 was successfully launched in Xichang (photo source: screenshot of "Beidou" documentary). Now, Amap has announced that Beidou has been used more than 2100 million times a day, and the deployment rate of Beidou has exceeded that of other satellite navigation systems such as GPS.

Beidou system surpasses GPS in many dimensions, such as the average number of satellites used in a single positioning, civil positioning accuracy and so on, and formally realizes the overall dominance of domestic navigation application positioning. The Galaxy incident will not happen again.

It took 26 years from the establishment of the project to the completion of the network, and then 28 years to surpass the GPS to achieve Beidou dominance. During the past 28 years, researchers have trudged through mountains and forests with all kinds of hardships that are indescribable.

01. Science and technology is difficult. China was not rich in 1994.

At that time, the GPS of the United States had been successfully built, with an investment of more than 20 billion US dollars. The budget of China's entire "863" plan (including seven major areas, including Beidou) is only 10 billion yuan.

One of the details is more real. Tan Shusen, deputy chief designer of Beidou navigation system, can only share one office with four people, which is less than 20 square meters.

The Beidou No.1 project (picture source: screenshot of the Beidou documentary) the problem of lack of money can still be solved, and what is more fatal is the lack of technology. In 1996, 33 Western countries, including the United States and Britain, signed the Wassenaar Agreement, which implements a control list of goods and technologies for developing countries, led by China.

In the face of this lack of financial resources and technological blockade, China has come up with a classic three-step strategy: the first step is to build Beidou I to cover the domestic area, the second step to build Beidou II to cover the Asia-Pacific region, and the third step to build Beidou III to cover the whole world.

The three-step Strategy of the Beidou system (Picture Source: screenshot of the Beidou documentary) in 2000, China successfully launched two satellites into the sky with independent research and development, and established the Beidou-1 system. Besides the United States and Russia, China has become the third country in the world to have a global satellite navigation system independently.

Beidou 1 is epoch-making, while Beidou 2 is racing against time.

When the Beidou-2 satellite project was established in 2004, it was faced with a fatal problem-no frequency.

In space, the satellites of the United States and Russia have occupied the best frequencies and orbits. if Beidou wants to obtain a legal orbit, it must declare to the International Telecommunication Union.

This problem is not just troubling China. The European Union is also in full swing to build its own Galileo navigation system, which also needs to be declared. The two major economies happened to coincide and successively applied for frequency to the International Telecommunication Union.

The response from the International Telecommunication Union is that the frequency can be opened for another period, with both parties coming first-come, first-served and launching a satellite by April 17, 2007 at the latest, otherwise it will automatically expire.

At that time, China had money but no technology, while the European Union had technology and no money. China wants to join hands with the European Union by spending money on technology. The two sides had a brief marriage, but broke up due to political wind and other reasons. China not only did not get the technology, but also wasted valuable time.

At this time, with only two years to go before the frequency fails, we are still unable to make our own atomic clock, the key technology that restricts Beidou-2.

The atomic clock is the core device of the satellite for timing and positioning, which is equivalent to the heart of the satellite. If China wants to maintain its hard-won frequency, it must develop its own domestic atomic clock within two years.

Subsequently, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, aerospace science and technology, and aerospace science and technology, and three teams tackled more than 50 key problems in materials, engineering, and other fields at the same time, incinerated the plaster and continued the dial, and finally made the domestic atomic clock before the frequency failed.

Domestic atomic clock (photo source: screenshot of "Beidou" documentary) at 4: 00 on April 14, 2007, the first satellite of Beidou-2 carrying a domestic atomic clock was successfully launched. 20:00 on the 17th, the ground receiver received a satellite signal from space, and China succeeded in keeping the frequency. At this moment, the deadline set by the International Telecommunication Union is less than four hours away.

The successful launch of the first satellite of Beidou II has enabled China to successfully break through the technical blockade, and the follow-up satellite system construction has also begun to go smoothly.

In 2012, 14 satellites of Beidou II were launched and netted. The Beidou-3 project was launched in 2009 and completed the network of 35 satellites by 2020.

At this point, the three-step strategy has been completed. Beidou navigation system has become the third mature global satellite system after the United States and Russia.

02, catch up with and surpass GPS, Beidou has repeatedly built Qigong Beidou navigation system in the process of construction, it has been applied to China's disaster relief work.

In 2008, the Wenchuan earthquake shocked the world. Communications to the hardest-hit areas at the epicenter were completely interrupted, and contact was lost inside and outside the epicenter.

Subsequently, a unit carrying a Beidou terminal made a rapid advance along National Highway 317 and entered the hardest-hit area of Wenchuan. Along the way, the troops sent the disaster detection to the disaster Relief headquarters with Beidou's unique short message communication technology, opening up communication channels inside and outside the earthquake area. Finally, with the help of reinforcements from disaster relief troops, more than 500 victims were rescued. At that time, it relied on the Beidou No.1 system.

Short message technology (picture source: "Beidou" documentary screenshot) during the subsequent Ya'an earthquake in Sichuan, Beidou 2 had been networked, and the Beidou terminal was also immediately distributed to the rescue forces to enter the disaster area. Beidou has higher accuracy and wider coverage in this earthquake relief, and has completed hundreds of thousands of communication and location services, three times that of the Wenchuan earthquake.

The reason why Beidou plays such an important role in earthquake relief is mainly due to short message technology. Short message technology can realize two-way communication between users and Beidou satellite, which is a unique communication technology of Beidou navigation system. Satellite navigation such as American GPS, Russian Gronas and European Galileo do not have this function.

To put it popularly, short message technology is similar to mobile phone short message. The original Beidou 1 and Beidou 2 only supported the transmission of 120 Chinese characters. However, the 120 words with positioning and navigation information played a vital role in the Wenchuan and Ya'an earthquakes.

After the completion of the Beidou 3, the Beidou navigation system has supported the transmission of 1000 Chinese characters, as well as voice and pictures.

Beidou system has a strong application value in scenarios where communication networks can not be covered, such as emergency disaster relief, scientific research, ocean shipping and so on.

Take ocean shipping as an example. According to statistics, at least 70,000 fishing vessels and law enforcement vessels across the country are using the Beidou terminal. The search and rescue function and communication function of the Beidou have rescued more than 10,000 people. Chinese fishermen call Beidou "Mazu at sea".

The fishing boat uses the Beidou terminal (picture source: "Beidou" documentary screenshot) the Beidou navigation system can provide meter-level and decimeter-level accuracy, and can even achieve centimeter precision positioning through the calibration of the ground base station. In the Asia-Pacific region, the signal transmission quality and satellite call quantity of Beidou system have obvious advantages.

The success of Beidou has also had an impact on GPS-related industries. According to CCTV, the highest price of GPS positioning chips imported from China can reach 1000 yuan per chip, but after the completion of Beidou, the price is reduced to 6 yuan per chip.

With the gradual deepening of the application of Beidou navigation system, if the supporting equipment in related scenes can not support Beidou, it will lose a lot of market, which forces other countries to apply Beidou in related hardware and software, which further spawns a trillion-yuan market.

03, civilian outbreak, the market is the king if the application of Beidou in the military, disaster relief and other fields is the will of the state. The promotion of Beidou in the civilian field makes it the choice of the market.

At the beginning of the market application, Beidou officials only made a low-level operating system. With the application of Beidou gradually going deep into all aspects of daily life, various industries continue to develop on the underlying operating system of Beidou, which makes the business ecology of Beidou flourish gradually.

Beidou commercial application began to be seen in the mobile phone market. In 2013, IT magazine LaptopMagazine named Samsung GALAXY Note 3 as the "most comprehensive smartphone of the year."

A month later, Samsung announced that two models of the national version of the phone had become the world's first smartphones to support the Beidou navigation system.

At that time, the Beidou-2 satellite had just been set up for two years, and its commercial value had already appeared. Since 2012, most of the smartphones released by domestic mainstream mobile phone manufacturers support Beidou navigation system.

In 2020, two months after Beidou 3 announced the completion of the network, Apple, which has been criticized for not supporting Beidou, could not withstand market pressure and announced that iPhone12 would support Beidou positioning chips.

With the advantage of the world's largest mobile phone market, China has rapidly increased the penetration of Beidou in mobile phone terminals.

As of the first half of 2022, 128 smartphones applied for access in China supported Beidou location, accounting for more than 98% of the total shipments in the first half of the year.

After the peak of mobile applications, Beidou is being surrounded by the market to infiltrate into smart car terminals. Amap is one of the most typical applications of Beidou system.

In 2020, after the successful networking of Beidou 3, the lane-level navigation service released by Amap applied the sub-meter-level high-precision positioning technology of the Beidou navigation system, combined with the correction information of the reference station, after fusion and solution, the positioning accuracy has evolved from 5-10 meters to the lane level within 1 meter. This is the first lane-level navigation service in China that can be implemented entirely on smartphones.

And one of the important reasons for Amap's "cool techs" traffic light countdown function, which was launched this year and based on arithmetic, is also the stable, continuous, efficient and accurate positioning ability of the Beidou system, so that users can intelligently calculate the countdown reading seconds of the current intersection red light, or the number of rounds they need to wait.

With the support of the State Beidou Office, users can sense the existence of the Beidou system through pictures, voice, and other ways in the latest version of Amap's navigation itinerary review, pre-departure voice broadcast, location sharing, and other service scenarios. This "important weapon of the country" has widely served the daily travel of the people.

In fact, the earliest navigation system was very crude, and there was no lane-level navigation, not to mention the further development of traffic light countdown. Amap's initiative is based on the deepening application of Beidou in the Chinese market, and it will be updated and iterated continuously with the continuous increase of market demand in the future.

At the same time, the application of Beidou system in many other fields is also gradually unfolding.

Big to finance, electric power security, small to get up on time alarm clock, express logistics dynamic, all rely on Beidou escort. Before Beidou came out, these services relied on GPS. If the United States shuts down GPS services, the consequences will be far beyond imagination. Now, we no longer have to worry about it.

On November 4 this year, the Information Office of the State Council officially released the white paper "China's Beidou in the New era". Beidou navigation system has become an important new infrastructure to provide all-weather, all-time, high-precision positioning, navigation and timing services for global users.

The 30 satellites in orbit of Beidou 3 are in good condition, with more than 300 classes and millions of equipment components made in China, with excellent performance. the measured results show that the global positioning accuracy is better than 5 meters, the performance in the Asia-Pacific region is better, and the service performance is better than the design index in an all-round way.

Beidou application industry is also showing a rapid development like Japan, and its output value may exceed 1 trillion yuan in 2025.

04. Written in the end, as stated in the article issued by the China Beidou Navigation system Management Office, Beidou has widely entered into mass consumption and other areas of people's livelihood. Gao de launched a series of services based on Beidou system, which are welcomed and loved by the general public, and have become the most typical application scenarios in the civilian field of Beidou system.

At present, domestic Beidou basic products have been exported to more than 120 countries and regions, providing services to users of more than 100 million. In the future, with the further deepening of the application of Beidou, the domestic Beidou industry will also be a hundred feet. Further, the enterprises that are the first to be highly bound to Beidou will also continue to benefit.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Lei Feng net (ID:leiphone-sz), author: Han Yongchang, Editor: Wu Wenliang

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.