BeiDou User Segment

COMPASS
Title	BeiDou User Segment
Author(s)	GMV.
Level	Basic
Year of Publication	2011

The Compass Navigation Satellite System (CNSS), also named BeiDou-2, is China’s second-generation satellite navigation system that will be capable of providing positioning, navigation, and timing services to users on a continuous worldwide basis.

On November 2, 2006, China announced the 2nd generation Chinese navigation system, COMPASS. The system is currently under development evolving from a regional system called BeiDou-1, and in the first phase will provide high-accuracy positioning services for users in China and its neighbouring regions. As of April 2011, eight satellites for Compass have been launched. According to an official report, " the eighth Beidou/Compass satellite marks the completion of basic function of Beidou (Compass) Navigation Satellite System " .

The long-term goal is to develop an independent global navigation satellite system similar to the GPS and GLONASS.

COMPASS User Segment

The COMPASS User Segment consists of COMPASS/Beidou user terminals, which receive Compass navigation signals, determine pseudoranges (and other observables) and solve the navigation equations in order to obtain their coordinates. A COMPASS Receiver is a device capable of determining the user position, velocity and precise time (PVT) by processing the signal broadcasted by COMPASS satellites. Any navigation solution provided by a GNSS Receiver is based on the computation of its distance to a set of satellites, by means of extracting the propagation time of the incoming signals traveling through space at the speed of light, according to the satellite and receiver local clocks.

In June 2011, the system has completed the ground segment commissioning, and also the test section of the user terminal development has been completed. There is also an international cooperation in terms of Compatibility and Interoperability between BeiDou and other GNSSs, that will lead to interoperable terminals compatible with other GNSSs.

Applications

GNSS applications are all those applications that use a GNSS signals to collect position, velocity and time information to be used by the application. For instance, the position and velocity provided by a COMPASS user terminal may be used for different kinds of applications (civil, military, scientific) such as:

• Fishery: Fishermen safety of life, Oceanic and economic security, Protection of marine resources and sovereignty.
• Disaster Prevention and Mitigation: improvement of rescue response and decision-making capability due to rapid and timely disaster alert, rescue command scheduling and rapid emergency communication.
• Timing: Beidou/GPS multi-mode time synchronization devices with embedded Beidou/GPS timing module.
• Transportation: fleet management.
• Water conservancy.
• Meteorology.
• Forest Fire Prevention.
• Soil Monitoring.
• Coal Mine Safety Monitoring.

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