CHANGSHA, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) is integrating into key industries by giving full play to its ever-enhancing capabilities regarding "spatio-temporal services."
Industry insiders say that the BDS is becoming a new engine which propels industrial upgrading and promotes high-quality economic development, making its "spatio-temporal services" sustain both the transformation of traditional industries and the thriving of emerging sectors.
In the "space-time sensitive" transportation industry, the BeiDou system is empowering and reaching all scenarios up in the skies and down on the ground and on the sea.
In the civil aviation field, the BDS can support the whole process from aircraft takeoff taxiing to cruise landing. It can provide aircraft with real-time positioning, report data via short message services and precisely track the flight status of aircraft in the skies.
In the field of rail transit, trains can independently obtain real-time location information and dynamically adjust their operating status thanks to the "air-space-vehicle-ground integrated" control network which is achieved through BDS high-precision services and 5G technology.
As for road transportation, connected BDS ground augmentation devices, vehicle-mounted terminals and other facilities jointly provide vehicles with accurate positioning even in weak signal environments and offer services such as optimal road conditions and blind-spot warnings.
Reaching across the vast oceans, the BDS is sustaining the construction of a dynamic monitoring and intelligent maritime rescue system by providing "spatio-temporal services" to diverse sectors -- including polar scientific research, marine observation, long-distance communications, maritime rescue, and more.
BDS has achieved high-precision lane-level navigation, covering more than 99 percent of urban and rural roads across the country as of the end of 2024, noted a white paper on the development of China's satellite navigation and positioning service industry released in May.
The total output value of China's satellite navigation and positioning service industry had reached 575.8 billion yuan (about 80.85 billion U.S. dollars) in 2024, up 7.39 percent year on year, it said.
BDS "spatio-temporal services" are also empowering the engineering construction field via the integration of intelligent technologies.
A BDS high-precision intelligent construction system sustained the construction of the Ezhou Huahu International Airport in central China's Hubei Province, the country's first cargo-focused airport. It guided precise operations via three-dimensional graphics and supplied positioning enabling a forklift's bucket to reach centimeter-level accuracy.
The system supported efficient collaboration among over 40,000 staff members and nearly 1,000 units of engineering machines, shortening the construction period by 35 percent and greatly reducing costs.
The capabilities of the BDS are also being highlighted in the country's burgeoning smart cities. Based on the integration of BDS and multi-dimensional data, urban "space-ground coordination" monitoring networks can accurately predict risks and provide minute-level warnings, thus safeguarding people's lives and property.
China began to develop its own navigation satellite system in 1994. BDS-1 entered service and started providing positioning services in China at the end of 2000. Since that time, China has become the third country in the world to have a navigation satellite system.
BDS-2 was completed in 2012, providing passive positioning services to the Asia-Pacific region. In 2020, BDS-3 was formally commissioned to provide satellite navigation services worldwide.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), China has managed to establish a national surveying and mapping reference system integrating ground, sea, air and space, while the country also developed a national satellite navigation and positioning reference station network based on the BDS during this period, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources.
The system, notably, can support the large-scale application of BDS and provide centimeter-level high-precision navigation and positioning services for various industries and fields.
"The next-generation of BDS is expected to achieve higher-precision positioning and timing. Looking forward, it will sustain progress of the digital economy, smart society and core infrastructure, and will also serve other fields including deep space exploration," said Li Jiancheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of Central South University. ■
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