Exclusive Interview With Haida Chairman Liao Dinghai: "Beidou +5G" Will Make China The Earliest Intelligent Country.

In May this year, Mount Qomolangma welcomed the third summit survey in China. In the past, all the surveying and mapping equipment used here came from China, and it is also the first time we have used the Beidou satellite navigation system developed by ourselves.

This is our country's completely independent satellite navigation system, which has made a breakthrough in the extreme environment. In fact, the industry chain company has been growing up with the system for several decades during this period.

With the completion of the global networking of Beidou three global satellite navigation system, the industry represented by the "new infrastructure" will open huge space for the "Beidou +" landing, and will even change the future life mode of mankind.

In an interview with the twenty-first Century economic report, Liao Dinghai, chairman of Haida, pointed out that 5G has opened up a new industrial ecosystem. With the gradual upgrading of the Beidou precise location service, the prospect will be very broad. "Our national Beidou satellite navigation system is in the front of the world in the application of high-precision satellite navigation. I think China will be the first country to realize intelligentization through the Beidou system and 5G in the future. The pace will be faster in the world.

Satellite based augmentation system speed up deployment

Twenty-first Century: what are the differences between the Beidou system and the other three global navigation systems?

Liao Dinghai: the first is short message communication, and it can send short messages in conjunction with location, and has the function of location report. This function played a very important role in the Wenchuan earthquake and other relief efforts.

The second is the star based augmentation system now being built. Because of the advantage of backwardness, the application of the Beidou satellite navigation system in our country, especially in the application of high-precision satellite navigation, is ahead of the world.

In twenty-first Century: the industry believes that the information of the satellite navigation system will be easily blocked by physical conditions and partitions. So what direction will the industry overcome in the next direction?

Liao Dinghai: when developing the high-precision satellite navigation application, the state has developed rapidly on the foundation reinforcement system, and many enterprises are deploying related technologies. We are also helping the construction of industrial chain on a large scale.

But in the process, there are too many base stations and difficult management, and the reliability is also limited by ground communication, and there will be dead ends. So we started the layout of satellite based augmentation system 4 years ago.

Some time ago, Yang Changfeng, chief designer of the Beidou satellite navigation system, said to the central Haida exchange that the Beidou system itself will have its own satellite based augmentation system in the future, but there is another process.

In principle, the satellite based augmentation system enhances the positioning accuracy of the original satellite navigation system by transmitting the enhanced signal from the geostationary satellite broadcasting satellite and transmitting the precise satellite orbit parameter information to the users.

Against this background, our Beidou navigation system will be better than other systems when it is deployed.

Twenty-first Century: what is the progress of the domestic satellite based augmentation system?

Liao Dinghai: at present, our country's related enterprises have already adopted the ground-based augmentation system widely. The satellite based augmentation system is not very common yet, but this is the application direction in the future. We began to prepare after listing, and the layout has been completed.

There are some commercial companies in the satellite based augmentation system abroad, but they are limited to users in the fields of ocean and oil. We hope that the star based augmentation system will be popularized in the next application scenario.

In contrast, the foundation reinforcement system belongs to the earlier generation technology. Its advantage is that the initialization is very fast, but the shortcoming is that the operation and maintenance cost is high, the reliability is difficult to guarantee, and there is a dead angle and can not achieve full coverage.

Satellite based augmentation system does not rely on ground communication, and can broadcast information directly to users via satellite. Therefore, the cost is lower, there is no dead angle, and it is all-weather and full time.

At present, its only drawback is that the initialization time from boot to available is longer. Of course, with the development of technology, it will be solved in the future.

In the future, it can be combined application of ground-based augmentation system and star based augmentation system. The two systems are running at the same time, and the reliability can be guaranteed more. Of course, this is the transition period, and then after the completion of the satellite based augmentation system, perhaps the foundation reinforcement system will disappear.

System upgrade test bottom design capability

Twenty-first Century: with the continuous upgrading of the Beidou system, how does Haida meet the upgrading needs of the previous two generations of landing products? Are there any difficulties?

Liao Dinghai: there was not much problem in using the Beidou two system for civilian scenes. Because we know that the product is constantly upgrading, the products we designed before did not make chip chips, because they could not be upgraded after they were made. Once upgrading, they need to be replaced by chips, which need to be sent back to the manufacturers.

We chose to design with FPGA, which is a chip that can be upgraded. Of course, the cost is high. So our products can be upgraded directly with the system, and the upgrading of civilian products is not a big problem.

Work is now being done. The upgrading of base stations, including the ground-based augmentation system, needs to be solved by adding modules or machines. But this is a transitional practice. With the completion of this Beidou three global network, the chip designed for Beidou three will be compatible with Beidou two, but if it is backward compatibility from Beidou two to Beidou three, it can not be realized. This is also the reason why our baseband chip has no chip.

Of course, in some specific scenarios such as military, many may not be upgraded, it is necessary to update directly.

"Twenty-first Century": in May, Haida once helped Mount Everest survey. Where the objective environment is special, what is the difficulty in landing?

Liao Dinghai: the Mount Everest project is more symbolic. It shows that our country is strong. Under such harsh environmental conditions on Mount Everest, it is very meaningful to adopt independent mapping equipment, including technology and Beidou satellite system.

For us, technology is ready-made. The only thing to do is equipment design to meet the harsh environment of Mount Everest. Reliability is definitely the first consideration.

For this reason, we should consider comprehensively from the aspects of technology, technology, stability and light weight, for example, equipped with enough batteries to cope with 40 degrees below zero temperature. All work flow is customized and configured to start working at a single button. Even considering that there is a slight bump and injury easily at high altitude, we also turn the nut on the equipment into an internal sink.

Twenty-first Century: what do you think of the feasibility of the star chain plan put forward by Elon Musk earlier?

Liao Dinghai: I admit that Mask is a great entrepreneur. But achieving this goal is not easy.

Because this requires the number of satellites to launch at least 8000, which is not like the launch of dozens of satellites by the satellite navigation system. Otherwise, communication links can not be reached, and the cost of launching and operating tens of thousands of satellites is hard to imagine.

It is not easy to launch more than 10 thousand satellites even if the country is behind it, let alone a private company. I think this is not yet possible. Now it is still in the conceptual stage.

"Beidou + new infrastructure" opens the imagination space

Twenty-first Century: what is the layout of the company in the field of "new capital construction"?

Liao Dinghai: the definition of "new capital construction" is basically consistent with ours.

In the future, "new infrastructure" will bring more large-scale information, which will turn into the huge information flow in the 5G era, and select what information to be applied. The precision location service based on Beidou system can be applied to smart city solutions, information acquisition equipment, solutions, military applications and other fields of future marine strategy.

Our strategic position is to be the leader of "Beidou + precision location service". Make precise location services and equipment, extend to the next stage, and do spatiotemporal data. The spatio-temporal data in 5G huge information flow is very important. This is a data ecological chain formed by information such as time, space and location.

For this reason, we have laid a large number of downstream industries, such as acquiring geographic information enterprises, smart city application enterprises, and so on.

Twenty-first Century: the arrival of the 5G era is considered a historic opportunity for the development of the Beidou industry. What do you think of the market imagination of "5G+ Beidou system"?

Liao Dinghai: the development of 5G is equivalent to that of the two lane highway, which extends to the eight Lane expressway. The traffic problem is solved. On this road, you can run a lot of traffic, logistics and information flow. Satellite navigation is one of the indispensable information flows.

A lot of location information existed before, but there was no system before. Now, with the Beidou system, the detection is simpler and easier to form streamlined information flow.

5G has opened the new ecosystem of the industry and loaded up the Beidou precise location service we are doing. The prospect will be very broad.

With location service solutions and spatio temporal data, integration can be used in areas such as autopilot, Internet of things, intelligent agriculture and so on, and all of them will be automated applications in the future. Now it seems that it is not far away.

Twenty-first Century: what is the core logic that Haida has followed in the Beidou + industry landing process?

Liao Dinghai: the Beidou system is a national strategy. The state attaches importance to it and brings hope to the industry. In terms of technology, we have experienced the crossing from Beidou 1 to No. two to No. three, which is not very difficult. It only adds some channels to the chip and receives more satellites.

But the application is extensive. In particular, the new infrastructure promotes the next broad development of information technology. In my opinion, in the future, China will be the first intelligentized country through the Beidou system and 5G, which will be relatively fast in the world.

Especially in high precision applications, China must be in the front. Including automatic driving, AI, logistics, robotics and other precise location mobile applications, the industry will develop rapidly.

Among them, I think automatic driving will develop very fast in the future. In a few years, we may start to popularize L3 level automatic driving. The laws and regulations will soon catch up with them. Of course, it's only on express roads and highways. L5 level automatic driving may take at least 5 years.

But it is certain that the future development of science and technology will bring great changes to people's life style and values.

Twenty-first Century: in the face of the great opportunities, what are the main directions for the next breakthrough?

Liao Dinghai: Beidou system is more used in outdoor scenes, and its limitation is in indoor scenes. It will take a long time to solve the indoor location problem in the future. Indoor and outdoor are two main categories of technology.

Integrated navigation with satellite navigation and inertial navigation will solve the problem of indoor and other space navigation. Haida has laid out almost all aspects of inertial navigation, and has been able to land in some areas, and its accuracy is very high. But the problem is that it is too expensive. How to reduce costs and make the volume smaller is the direction we are exploring.

Therefore, in the direction of layout, outdoor satellite positioning is our core competitiveness, we must maintain the industry status, and expand the application space. The future must be chip and low cost, landing to more popular applications, such as automatic driving.

So the first aspect is to extend and expand satellite navigation and precise location services to the public.

The second aspect is to move towards big solutions, especially at the national level. Now we are fully equipped with technology, precise positioning, 3D laser, ocean sonar, indoor positioning technology and so on. We all have the ability to make solutions and services for certain areas of the country, or to provide services for enterprises and related departments. This is a new direction for us to extend our future.

Over the years, we are making equipment and technology layout in the upstream. We have to go up the ceiling very low, and the extension of the downstream will be very large.