A ground system aimed at enhancing the navigation precision of the Chinese BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) was approved in central China's Hubei Province on 22 March 2013, as the website CCTV reported. The BeiDou Ground Base Enhancement System (BGBES), a network consisting of 30 ground base stations, an operating system and a precision positioning system, was approved by the evaluation committee
The system is expected to help improve the BDS' positioning precision to 2 centimeters horizontally and 5 centimeters vertically via tri-band real-time precision positioning technology, and to 1.5 meters with the single-frequency differential navigation technology.
The BDS began providing services to civilian users in China and surrounding areas in the Asia-Pacific region at the end of last year. It aims to take a share of the GPS-dominated domestic market. China launched the first satellite for the BDS in 2000, and a preliminary version of the system has been used in traffic control, weather forecasting and disaster relief work on a trial basis since 2003.
