The main screen at the 10th China Satellite Navigation Conference shows an interview with Yang Changfeng, chief designer of the BeiDou system, on Tuesday. Photo: Deng Xiaoci/GT

The overall output value of China's satellite navigation and positioning services industry reached 301.6 billion yuan ($43 billion) in 2018, up 18.3 percent on a year-on-year basis, with the country's home-developed BeiDou satellite system contributing 80 percent to the core production value, reads an official white paper.

The data was published in an official report on the Development of China's Satellite Navigation Industry (2019) released by the Global Navigation Satellite System and Location-Based Service Association of China and sent to the Global Times on Tuesday, ahead of the opening of the 10th China Satellite Navigation Conference.

The conference, slated for Wednesday to Sunday, is the largest, most influential, most authoritative and most professional exposition of the satellite navigation industry in the world, according to a media guide attained by the Global Times on Tuesday.

Satellite-shaped mascot Xiao Bei appears at the conference entrance in Beijing on Tuesday, showcasing a bid dippler graph and a location pitch on his happy head. Photo: Deng Xiaoci/GT

According to the white paper, the industry's core sectors are directly related to the development and application of satellite navigation technology, including chips, devices, algorithm, software, navigation data, terminal equipment and infrastructure. 

These sectors achieved 106.9 billion yuan in output value, or 35.44 percent of the industry's total, the paper said. 

BeiDou, "Big Dipper" in English, contributed 80 percent to the output value generated by the core sectors. The system raked in a total 194.7 billion yuan with related products and services, it said. 

BeiDou applications have continued to deepen in dozens of fields such as transportation, marine fisheries and mapping.

According to the white paper, more than 80 million domestic BeiDou sets have continued to deepen terminal products and enter services as of the end of 2018. 

The total number of terminal products including smartphones installed with BeiDou compatible chips was close to 700 million. 

BeiDou services have been adopted by e-commerce, mobile intelligent terminal manufacturing, location services and other vendors and have entered the mass consumption, sharing economy and people's livelihoods, profoundly changing people's production and lifestyles, said the white paper.

The report illustrates the new trend in China's BeiDou development, the combination of the navigation services and industry applications in multiple sectors, "which directly contributes to the national economy and benefits the users with better accuracy and efficiency," Wang Yanyan, association deputy secretary-general, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

And because BeiDou is developed in China, the navigation industry's safety is guaranteed and "it will continue to play a crucial role in the country's bloodline development such as infrastructure," Wang said. 

Velocity improves 

The velocity of the services will reach 0.2 meters per second and the timing accuracy 20 nanoseconds, with a 95 percent confidence level, Wang said. 

The global service availability will be above 95 percent on the planet, he noted.

The home-developed BeiDou navigation system began serving China in 2000 and the Asia-Pacific region in 2012, and went global with the successful completion of its BeiDou System-3 (BDS-3) primary system at the end of 2018.

On Friday, China sent a new BDS-2 backup satellite into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, bringing the total number to 45.

The BDS-2 system has provided stable and reliable services since it went into operation, and its positioning accuracy has improved from 10 to 6 meters, the white paper said. 

GPS-enabled smartphones are typically accurate to within a 4.9 meter radius under open skies, according to gps.gov, an official US government information website. Accuracy worsens near buildings, bridges and trees.

The BDS-3 and BDS-2 systems will jointly provide services before October 2020, and after that the BDS-3 will take over. 

Meanwhile on Monday, China unveiled the world's first high-precision chip that supports all BDS-3 civil signals in Beijing. 

The Lyra-II chip was developed by the Shenzhen-listed Beijing UniStrong Science and Technology Company. 

The new chip supports the widest range of global positioning satellite signal systems including BDS, GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Star Based Augmentation Systems, Wu Lin, vice-president of the company, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The multifunctional BDS-3 chip will be key to the industrialization and application of the latest navigation system in which chip technology drives the country's independent innovation, according to the developers.

By improving the service from 24 to 31 "frequency points," the chip can support all network modes, Wu said, "like the latest smartphone can support not only 2G, 3G and 4G, but also the newest 5G services."