China to set up BDS international maritime surveillance centre

BEIJING: China is planning to build an international maritime surveillance centre in its major Tianjin port city to monitor and assess the accuracy of its homegrown satellite system, a rival to America's GPS.

The centre has been set up for BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), which is a rival to the US-operated Global Positioning System (GPS).

The surveillance centre will monitor and assess the accuracy, operating situation and signal quality of the system and report to users on the sea, ensuring high quality BDS service," said Chai Jinzhu, an official with the ministry's north China sea maritime insurance centre.

Under an arrangement made by the Maritime Safety Administration, the north China sea maritime insurance centre has been working on the construction and operation of the surveillance centre.

Named after the Chinese term for the plough or the Big Dipper constellation, the BeiDou project was formally launched in 1994, some 20 years after the inception of GPS.

The first Beidou satellite was launched in 2000.

Beidou is currently one of the four dominating navigation systems in the world, along with the US GPS, Russia's GLONASS, and the European Union's Galile.