Key officials from the BeiDou and GLONASS programs, affiliated organizations and members of the satellite navigation industry met at the end of August to fine-tune a cooperation deal between the two systems.
The “Agreement on Cooperation between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the Russian Federation on the Peaceful Use of Global Satellite Navigation Systems BDS and GLONASS,” which the Global Times said was signed in November 2018, provides legal and organizational guarantees for satellite navigation cooperation between the two countries, according to the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System website. The official BeiDou site said the two countries confirmed the agreement would take effect but it was not clear when that would happen.
During the August 30 meeting in Kazan, Russia, China and Russia also reached consensus on the text of an agreement on making the timing provided by the two systems interoperable. There were also reports from four working groups on compatibility and interoperability, augmentation and station construction, monitoring and assessment, and joint applications. During the discussions progress was made on joint station construction, cross-border transportation, precision agriculture and other cooperative projects including joint research and development of chips and other applications.
The two countries also released a “multi-mode and multi-frequency radio frequency (RF) chip for global signals of the Chinese and Russian navigation satellite systems.”
A site survey of Chinese-Russian satellite monitoring stations was completed and the survey certificate was signed. Under the agreement each country will deploy three monitoring stations within their own territories for the other country to use to correct navigation signals, according to the Global Times, which cited Sputniknews.cn.
