NovAtel Announces Beidou Support

Canadian manufacturer of GNSS products NovAtel has added support for the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) to its OEM6 family and selected OEMStar GNSS receivers. The long anticipated BDS Interface Control Document (ICD) release marks a significant milestone that facilitates global acceptance of BeiDou into the growing range of satellite-based positioning applications.

NovAtel has a long-standing partnership with several Chinese GNSS system manufacturers. This partnership has allowed NovAtel to verify B1 and B2 signal tracking on its latest generation receivers. The company has been supplying GNSS receivers that include the BeiDou constellation since Q4 2010. Pat Fenton, CTO at NovAtel, is having great expectations about the performance improvements BeiDou will provide to their AdVance RTK, GL1DE and SPAN GNSS/INS positioning algorithms.

BeiDou positioning has been available through NovAtel’s Chinese partners utilising the receiver Application Programming Interface (API) feature. With the BeiDou ICD made available to the public, NovAtel is now able to offer BeiDou positioning on its receiver products directly.

Firmware updates for the OEM6 and OEMStar receivers will enable tracking of the BeiDou signal in conjunction with GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and QZSS signals that are currently supported. Over the coming months NovAtel will be working with early-adopter customers to optimise their receiver positioning engines to support the BeiDou signals.