Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force jointly developed a new generation of global positioning systems, which are well known as GPS.
When GPS development reached a certain stage, Chinese scientists believed that we should also build our own navigation system, but this idea was opposed by some people, who believed that GPS is a mature technology that can be "taken" to use, and China's funds are limited, and there is no need to build separately.
At that time, Chinese space technology experts, Qi Faxuan, chief designer of the Shenzhou spacecraft, Chen Fangyun, and Sun Jiadong, the founders of the two bombs and one star, were all determined to build. Academician Tan Shusen was responsible for tracking the progress of GPS at that time, and in the study of GPS, Academician Tan Shusen found that although this system opens up civilian navigation signals to the world, there are many uncertainties. If you rely too much on GPS, it will lay a lot of hidden dangers for national defense and security. Moreover, the core technology cannot be bought with money, and the introduction of imitation is not far away, and China must independently develop satellite navigation systems.
In 1983, Academician Chen Fangyun, the founder of the two bombs and one satellite, first proposed a double-satellite positioning theory that was different from the GPS technical route, that is, to treat the center of the earth as a virtual satellite, and then launch two geosynchronous satellites to form a constellation to achieve rapid positioning of ground targets in the region. It was used to solve the problem of building a satellite navigation system in a difficult time of financial difficulties, but because of the opposition of some scientists, this idea was shelved for a while.
In 1989, China used communication satellites to carry out double-satellite positioning demonstration and verification experiments, which proved the correctness and feasibility of the technical system of the Beidou satellite navigation experimental system.
Then in 1991, the outbreak of the Gulf War, GPS on the air platform navigation, weapon launch and aiming, precision guidance, strike target positioning and other important operational links have played an irreplaceable key role, at this time everyone found that China needs to have its own navigation system, in 1994, China launched the beidou satellite navigation test system construction.
However, the core technical problem of the Beidou project - the signal "fast catching sperm heel" (abbreviation for fast capture of accurate tracking) was delayed to be solved, and Wang Feixue, who was still studying for a doctoral student at the time, participated in the Beidou project construction "Zhuge Lianghui" by chance, and after learning that the problem of "fast catching sperm heel" was not solved, Wang Feixue took the initiative to ask his mentor to form a team with his classmates to overcome this problem.
After research, Wang Feixue introduced emerging computer technology into the field of satellite signal processing, and proposed a new technical route of all-digital signal processing technology, which can be called the world's first.
However, some scientists are not assured that the technical plan proposed by these students, they proposed to share the risk, the research and development unit first allocated 600,000, the other 600,000 by the National University of Defense Technology advance payment, after the successful development of the equipment, the use of the unit to pay. In other words, if the breakthrough fails, then even if the 600,000 yuan they pay tuition, 600,000 at that time is not a small amount, and Wang Feixue and others are still only students, but the National University of Defense Technology still agreed to give Wang Feixue and others an appropriation and formally established the Beidou team.
In 1998, Wang Feixue's team successfully developed the Beidou-1 all-digital fast catch and signal reception system, and the first batch of "fast catch fine heel" data obtained after testing far exceeded everyone's expectations. Beidou's "fast catching sperm" technical equipment has won the first prize of the whole army's scientific and technological progress and the second prize of the national scientific and technological progress.
This year, Wang Feixue was only 27 years old, and as a student, he overcame a world problem and was the first in the world. In 1998, Dr. Wang Feixue graduated, his classmates also wanted to study abroad, have advised him to go abroad for further study, and later can also take his family out and settle abroad, and Wang Feixue rejected such a proposal, chose to stay in the National University of Defense Technology to teach, engaged in satellite navigation and positioning technology engineering research.
At that time, China's Beidou Navigation launched a "three-step" development strategy, first regional and then global, and successively built the Beidou-1, Beidou-2, and Beidou-3 systems.
In 2000, China launched two geostationary orbit satellites Beidou I, completed the Beidou satellite navigation test system, in 2004 China began the construction of Beidou II, in 2006, the state is ready to upgrade the Beidou I navigation system system. At that time, Beidou-1 had been running successfully for many years, the system was running stably and normally, and everyone unanimously advocated continuing to use the original technical indicators and basic parameters. However, Wang Feixue believes that if it is only a simple hardware update, there will be no qualitative leap in the improvement of system performance. Wang Feixue and his team boldly proposed a set of latest coding theory transformation application schemes.
In 2007, the first Beidou star was launched, but just after launching, it encountered electromagnetic interference from a certain country, and if it could not be solved, it would affect the next Beidou construction task.
Wang Feixue once again took the initiative to ask for help, saying that it took three months to overcome the problem, and Wang Feixue only took 70 days to complete the anti-interference satellite payload (refers to the instruments, equipment, personnel, experimental organisms and test pieces loaded on the spacecraft to directly achieve the specific tasks to be completed in orbit of the spacecraft). After testing, the performance indicators of the anti-jamming satellite payload they developed were greatly improved compared with the original, and the effective reception rate of satellite signals in a certain area jumped from less than 50% to 100% of the reception rate! The anti-interference ability has been increased by a factor of 1,000!
In March 2015, the first test satellite of China's Beidou global system was successfully launched. On-orbit tests have shown that the spaceborne equipment undertaken by Wang Feixue and his team has once again made major breakthroughs in high-precision, anti-interference, anti-irradiation and other technical performance. He once said that to grasp the international discourse, we must rely on strength
The coding theory transformation application scheme proposed by Wang Feixue was also applied to Beidou-2, which led to a jump in the efficiency of the entire Beidou short message service system: the power consumption of all terminal equipment was reduced by half, the anti-interference performance was doubled, and the parameters reached the optimal value.
Wang Feixue and the team have cracked a series of core problems such as system and coding, and have also overcome dozens of key technologies in the field of satellite navigation, not only developed the first handheld Beidou user aircraft, conquered the core signal of the Beidou navigation and positioning system, undertook 95% of the development tasks of a core module of the Beidou system, and developed 60 sets of key satellite payloads.
Wang Feixue can be said to have made great contributions to the construction of China's Beidou navigation. Around 2020, China will build a Beidou satellite navigation system covering the whole world. Compared with GPS, China Beidou Navigation also has location reporting and short message communication functions, so that the use of the Beidou system can not only know the location of the other party, but also contact through short messages of 70 Chinese characters, just like texting
"The average person says that the pain of research and development is nothing more than ten years of grinding a sword. But for a big power such as the Beidou, we have been trying to sharpen this sword for 25 years. No one knows where the end of this road is, but we must go on, if it is a sense of mission, this is our sense of mission - to fight for the best satellite navigation system in the world. ”