China to set up BDS international maritime surveillance center

China is planning to build an international maritime surveillance center for the Beidou Navigation Satellite System(BDS), an alternative to U.S.-operated GPS, authorities with the Ministry of Transport said on Tuesday.

The surveillance center, located in Tianjin Municipality, 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, according to Chai Jinzhu, an official with the ministry's north China sea maritime insurance center.

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

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.

Nonetheless, by 2012, a regional network had already taken shape, and the BDS is already providing positioning, navigation, timing and short message services in China and several other Asian countries.

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