Finding civilian applications for a military science breakthrough
Print Edition
WANG Shufang says her life has been framed by two important decisions. One was to join the research and development team of BeiDou Satellite Navigation System, and the other was to leave the team to promote commercial application of the system.
Wang, 45, recently talked about her career as a satellite engineer at a role-model symposium for students at Fudan University.
She graduated from Beihang University in Beijing with a major in electronic engineering. About that time, China was recruiting students for its own BeiDou Satellite Navigation System.
“An older engineer told us that China was going to build its own navigation system — the first of its kind in the country and the third globally, after GPS of America and GLONASS of Russia,” she says.
It was a hard decision. Wang came from a relatively poor family in a village in northeastern China. Her family had to borrow money for her university tuition. She felt under pressure to get a job with a high income to help the family out.
“Electronic engineering was a popular major at that time, and many of my classmates joined international companies or went abroad,” she says. “But to join the BeiDou team, I had to join the army, which meant lower pay.”
Still, she could not resist the temptation of being on the ground floor of an important new project. Of the 108 electronic engineering students in her university class, she was the only one to join the army 22 years ago. Within 10 years, she was a chief designer on the navigation project.
The Chinese team started from scratch in developing a national system. Wang was specifically in charge of developing the user receiver. Dealing with untested theories, two or three teams would work separately on designs, and where their results matched, success was achieved.
In one case, when results didn’t match, the team had to print out thousands of codes and check them one by one. Wang finally found the mistake. “I had done a design based on textbook theory, but things were different in industrial application,” she says.
One of the most unforgettable moments came in summer of 1997, when the first receiver sprang into operation.
“We were debugging the machine and the signal suddenly appeared,” she says. “It was an important breakthrough. It proved that our technologies were workable.”
But that was just the first step. The team then had to optimize their designs and test facilities repeatedly with the satellites.
At one point, she spent a week in northeastern China during the harsh winter, testing the receiver. Though the receiver was made according to military standards and could work down to temperatures of minus-40 degrees Celsius, the testing devices were civilian products that didn’t function in such extreme cold. Wang had to cover some of the facilities with her big military coat to coax results.
Sometimes, when testing went for several months, she had to carry the heavy receiver on her back during the day. It was so strenuous that she began to suffer from heart problems and fainted several times. A doctor told her to wear a 24-hour heart monitor. She was later scolded by him because the satellite signals skewed the heartbeat detection.
In 2007, when years of research were finally achieving positive results, Wang turned another corner in her life.
“Satellite navigation systems are very expensive to run because they involve more than 20 satellites and each can work for only about 10 years,” she explains. “So relying on government funding wasn’t enough.”
Wang decided that the future of the BeiDou system rested on developing civilian applications. After discussions with colleagues, she wrote a letter to the Central Military Commission, suggesting ways to promote that idea.
In the end, she left the army to joint the Ministry of Transport. But it was tough at first. “People did not accept BeiDou because they had never heard of it,” Wang says. “Although we promoted it in the name of the ministry, companies rejected us and even complained to the prime minister that they were being coerced into buying our product.”
That all seems long ago now. In the ensuing 10 years, more than 5 million BeiDou terminal products were produced. They were introduced into the transport section, generating more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.45 billion) in production value.
“The satellite tracks are like public parking places,” Wang says. “We had to work hard to make full use of every minute to release our satellites before others. But I don’t regret anything.”
Dedication to work did take its toll on family life. Wang had a daughter 10 years after getting married. The girl is in primary school now, whereas the children of former classmates are already in universities.
When her mother was seriously ill in 1998, Wang could get only two days of leave. She was with neither of her parents when they passed away.
“If my parents could see how successful BeiDou is now, they would be proud of my achievements and choices,” says Wang. “BeiDou is now used in many smartphones, including Samsung.”
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