Ying Xu

Ying Xu and BeiDou are two inseparable names. The latter refers to BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS)—China’s rival to GPS, which has already achieved regional coverage and is developing its global functions. The former—Ying Xu, as a representative of the thousands of people who quietly contribute to BDS, not only devoted herself to its development and construction, but also played an indispensable role in its promotion and spread.

As two of the most promising fields of science and technology, neither IoT nor AI can realize their future application without the support of basic information networks, within which navigation and communication are two indispensable elements. Deep integration of navigation and communication is also key to future Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) systems, with BeiDou as the core.

Xu talked about the two most innovative points of her research. The first one is the in-depth cross-disciplinary research about navigation and communication.  The study of these two most essential elements of future information networks is currently isolated from each other, so are the navigation systems and communication systems. Without affecting the quality of communication, they expect navigation and communication to share the same platform and use the same signal to provide integrated service that lowers energy consumption and cost. Such cross-disciplinary integration would be crucial to IoT and other applications. The second is the integration platform that mainly concentrates on the low Earth orbit / air based platforms, whose heights are normally between high orbit satellites and the ground. These platforms are less vulnerable to the multipath effect and nit-line-of-sight propagation than ground platforms, while its signal strength and flexibility are better than high orbit satellites.