China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System is on course to expand its services across the world. It is poised to serve countries along the Belt and Road Initiative by 2018 and across the globe by 2020, Zhang Chunling, chief engineer of China's Satellite Navigation System management office, revealed on Saturday during a seminar in Jiangsu Province's Nanjing.

Like Us on Facebook

According to Zhang, the BeiDou system has established stable services regionally for three years, with good performances across Beijing, Nanjing, and areas with low altitudes.

He added that BeiDou's chip modules and some infrastructure products have been made available to cater to the increasing demand of cutting edge devices including smartphones, laptops, wearables, to name a few. The technology has weaned China off its dependency on imported satellite navigation products.

Formally kicked off in 1994, China successfully launched its 23rd BeiDou navigation satellite last month for extensive civil use and provision of global services.

On June 16, China released a white paper discussing the country's three-step strategy to develop BeiDou system with the aim of launching 35 satellites by 2020 to provide all-time, all-weather, and highly accurate positioning, navigation, and timing services to users around the world.

Its coverage spans from 55 degrees north latitude to 55 degrees south latitude and between 55 and 180 degrees east latitude. Its positioning accuracy is less than 10 meters, with velocity measurement accuracy of less than 0.2 meters per second, and timing accuracy of less than 50 nanoseconds. Currently, the services are offered free of charge to users in the Asia-Pacific region.

Tagsbeidou system, Beidou navigation system, GPS