China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), now providing global coverage, is operating smoothly and has seen rapid growth in its applications across a range of industries.
As China's independently developed satellite navigation system, BDS is one of the four global systems recognized by the United Nations.
Its development began with early proposals in the 1980s, leading to the official approval of the BDS-1 project in 1994. The past three decades have seen BDS evolved through a carefully phased strategy.
The system has progressed through three major stages. BDS-1 was completed in 2000, providing services within China.
Construction of BDS-2 began in 2004 and was completed in 2012, extending the system's coverage to the Asia-Pacific region.
Development of BDS-3, which began even before BDS-2 started providing regional services, was completed by 2020, enabling global coverage.
"Currently, BDS operates with stability and reliability, delivering outstanding performance. This ensures a solid foundation for large-scale applications, industrial development and global services," said Liu Dake, executive vice president of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Location Based Services (LBS) Association of China (GLAC), a non-profit association specializing in the GNSS and LBS industry.
The outstanding performance of the BDS comes from its unique hybrid constellation, which includes medium earth orbit (MEO), inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO) and GEO satellites.
Satellites in different orbits, 21,000 and 36,000 kilometers from Earth, work together to provide continuous, high-precision positioning, navigation and timing services to users worldwide.
In recent years, the BDS-related industry in China has experienced rapid expansion. In 2023, the total output value of China's satellite navigation and positioning service industry reached 536.2 billion yuan (about 75.9 billion U.S. dollars), up 7.09 percent from the previous year.
"The scale of BDS applications is continually expanding, and the industry is now entering a new phase of large-scale application and high-quality development. With deeper integration of BDS with technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence, we anticipate new digital applications and innovative products and business models to emerge," said Yu Xiancheng, president of GLAC.
China’s BDS sees smooth operation, thriving applications
