China's Compass -- friendly GPS clone or Galileo bluff?

Ryan Caron over at Defense Tech has some hefty analysis on China's plans for their very own satellite navigation system, named Compass. No one is really clear what China's intentions for the system are, with rumors ranging from a minor upgrade to their regional Beidou system, to a full-on competitor to USA's GPS and Europe's Galileo. So far the most solid step China has taken towards actually building the system is an order of 18-20 rubidium atomic clocks that are necessary for syncing up satellites, but which have many other military uses. Ryan theorizes that China might just be bluffing about building a system of their own, in a bid to regain a piece of the Galileo pie, which they, along with all other non-European countries, have been unceremoniously written out of starting next year. More alarmingly, a global satnav system run by China would have the potential to operate as a jammer of US and European signals, another reason the various groups involved are so guarded with their systems. However it plays out, China currently has 32 satellite slots registered with the International Telecommunications Union for Compass, and bluff or not, there's a lot of potential there.

[Me @ Aug 9th 2006 8:50PM]

I welcome our satelite overlords...........

[Smoke_Dawg_187 @ Aug 9th 2006 8:57PM]

I say let's hail our new Chinese overlords! It's great to see the Bush Administration taking a page from the Communist by the continued spying on it's citizens. I'm glad the FBI monitors my email, I'm glad the NSA listens to our phone conversations. The transition to our new leadership should be fairly simple.

I wonder how our new leaders will handle the immigration problems we currently have now?

[TME @ Aug 9th 2006 9:05PM]

It's a GIANT LASER!

[Tony Rayo @ Aug 9th 2006 9:08PM]

If we can get people to stop posting "I welcome our *topic* overlords..." and get Engadget editors to stop referring to details as "deets" (I don't know where they heard that or who thought it was cool), I will be a happy reader once again ;).

- Tony R.

[Lucas @ Aug 9th 2006 10:06PM]

to be fir, doesn't china have the right to builld it's own system? just like most of the First-World countries have a right to keep nuclear arms. or start their own space program.

China is it's own country, people, and as much as some people don't like it, we're gonna have to get used to it.

[Murc @ Aug 9th 2006 10:07PM]

Smoke_Dawg - First of all, The Bush administration doesn't spy on you with GPS sats...and to think they do, shows how much intellegence (or lack there of) is.

And nobody is listening to your phone calls, and monitoring your email. If you had half a brain then you would know that they wern't listening to your phone calls....the number of calles per day is in the billions...its IMPOSSIBLE to monitor everyone...SO what they do is enter the phone number which they believe is a terrorists', and they see what numbers, that number has called. There is ZERO of actual listening.

[Samurai John @ Feb 10th 2008 2:15AM]

Murc -
"the number of calles per day is in the billions...its IMPOSSIBLE to monitor everyone"

Anoyone seen this story?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/503224.stm

First off, you'd be surprised at what your gov can and in many cases will do in order to protect itself from precieved threats.
I don't think Echelon was even that hard to pull off, it was your own congress who changed the term from "evesdropping on our own citzens" into "lawful interception" with the PATRIOT act.

On the other hand, it is true that GPS tracking systems on their own cannot be used to track you down without you knowing so, however, GPS-embedded cellphones can be used to keep tabs on an american citizen if for some reason they'd be suspected in aiding terrorists.

what can I say, sucks to be you guys.

[Dewbie @ Aug 9th 2006 10:07PM]

I welcome our Engadget editor overlords and their deets.....

[Dewbie @ Aug 9th 2006 10:09PM]

I welcome our Engadget editor overlords and their deets....

[D2 @ Aug 9th 2006 10:47PM]

Murc: Thanks for the clarification dude, its nice to get some reliable information you know. How do you know how all this stuff works, are you a government official? SO they have a database were they can enter terrorists' numbers, and get all the numbers that called that one. But why is there "ZERO of actual listenting". Are you sure the NSA doesnt listen to *any* phone calls, doesnt really matter i guess since Im sure Bush has it covered.

But can you really call Smoke_Dawg ignorant for thinking that GPS can be used to for surveillance? You are aware that lots of mobile phones now include GPS, how sure are you that data isnt covertly logged by the carriers. (independent of the fact that your mobile carrier can track your position wout gps)

[luckydraw @ Aug 9th 2006 11:27PM]

smoke_dawg I think it's time to re-arrange the tin-foil pyramid on your computer monitor. Also, I've been told to request that you stand near a high-tension powerline to re-charge your implant.....

[sfeng1 @ Aug 9th 2006 11:34PM]

"how sure are you that data isnt covertly logged by the carriers."

makes me laugh.

[Smoke_Dawg_187 @ Aug 10th 2006 12:04AM]

Thanks D2! I don't know why that guy had to flame me. Forgive me if I don't exactly trust our government. I mean, if Murc simply read how the government acted in the 1960's towards American citizen, than I think he'd know what I mean. Ever read the Pentagon Papers Murc? Ever read about G. Gordon Lidy?

I love my country, fear my government. No one knows what the government does with it's data mining. Ever hear of Carnivore? The government sues Google for search data in the guise of "child saftey". Now congress wants ISP to retain all their records on their customers website viewing habits. It's none of the governments business.
All this does is make it easier for the government to sieze your assests and continue funding it's evil projects.

Murc you communist!

[Smoke_Dawg_187 @ Aug 10th 2006 12:17AM]

Plus the editors were talking about what China's "real" plans were with these satellites.

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-03/2005-03-23-voa76.cfm?CFID=24907829&CFTOKEN=79276382

Even the Pentagon is concerned over Chinese military build up.

[jane @ Aug 10th 2006 2:42AM]

you find the best stuff

[Others @ Aug 10th 2006 3:07AM]

Why are we so worried about China retaking Taiwan? Is it because we want to protect that small but democratic nation? I don't believe it one bit, because if we were so concerned with democracy, we would have been just a tiny bit upset with the spying by the NSA. Maybe get a little red on the face when Bush laughs at our Checks and Balance of power. Grind some teeths when Rove commits a crime, no...I'm not even talking about the way he got Nixon and Bush in power, I'm talking about leaking the CIA agent's name for payback. *sarcasm* Yeah, I really believe that we care if Taiwan is a democracy or not. */sarcasm*

[Maktab @ Aug 10th 2006 7:54AM]

Murc's absolutely correct, and Smoke_Dawg shouldn't have sounded off on this without knowing the facts first. And while I welcome well-founded distrust of government power and surveillance capability, there is a vast gulf between responsible and rational distrust and outright paranoia.

The key thing to remember here is that GPS is a unidirectional system. The constellation of GPS satellites know their own position relative to the earth and continually broadcast this. Your GPS receiver collects this signal from a number of GPS satellites (usually at least 4-5) and compares and analyses the signals in order to figure out just where on earth you are. At no point does it send any data up to the satellite (just think how much data that would require), and none of the satellites have any knowledge of your location. This is what makes GPS infinitely scalable, in that it can have an unlimited number of receivers.

Now the fear with China's system is that the frequencies it is proposing for system are suspiciously close to those used by the GPS system. This has the potential to degrade the GPS signal and possibly even outright jam it. This would be chaotic, as so much of many systems and people are now enormously reliant on GPS for transport, timing and other such things. Any degradation of the GPS signal would cause quite a bit of disruption.

Finally, nobody is saying China does not have the right to develop their own version of GPS and Galileo. It's their money, after all. But at the same time, it's fair and prudent to be asking questions about their intentions, especially when the system seems to be designed with the express purpose of degrading the quality and reliability of GPS.

[Loafer @ Aug 10th 2006 8:07AM]

You (America) are (is) so worried about China retaking Taiwan because then China will have yet another port to the sea...

[Intrepid @ Aug 10th 2006 9:16AM]

Go China! Global Space Competition is just what the planet needs to take our focus off all the petty in-fighting that has been going on around the planet.

[Yrian @ Aug 10th 2006 9:35AM]

Yeah, and US and Europe satellites could jam China's. Or Europe's could jam US' and China's. Or all other possible combinations. However, it's more profitable to state it the way it was done in the article right?

[mr_smith @ Aug 10th 2006 11:28AM]

"how sure are you that data isnt covertly logged by the carriers. (independent of the fact that your mobile carrier can track your position wout gps)"
D2:
Data isn't "covertly" logged by wireless carriers, I work for one. True though, we can track a phone without GPS by seeing which towers it is using, but even that is not very specific, if they are only picking up one tower that narrows it down to a 3 - 7 mile radius.

[TKM @ Oct 12th 2006 5:22PM]

The US GPS satellite constellation (NAVSTAR) is not purely navigational, nor one way. This is not to say that your user receiver is sending it's position to anyone, it doesn't, but that the network is not unidirectional, and not single tasked. Only a subset of the function is described publicly, or in patents, and additional features are added with each new generation. I'd be willing to bet the classified features are even more interesting.

While it supports the course/acquisition (1.023 MHz) and precision military (10.23 MHz) timing/positional signals, there is also support for nuclear detonation, and missile launch detection, and a secure global paging system. Ground stations can communicate with the satellites, and the satellites can communicate with each other. So it is a little more complicated than a clock in space, that knows it's location.

The satellites contain more than one atomic clock (at least 3-4), the cesium ones being more accurate than the rubidium ones.