For railway transport development, digitalisation is a must. The new technologies are the answer to all challenges and opportunities in railways, as they approach the main problems related to congestion, capacity and environment. Digitalisation will boost competitiveness, will offer better connections, enhanced capacity, bringing added value to customers and transport companies.
In November, at the Fifth International Railway Summit, hosted in association with the International Union of Railways (UIC) and Huawei Technologies, a dedicated conference session focused on the aspects and importance of the Digital Transformation to Railways was held. This was the first event in Asia-Pacific, a region committed to invest in railway development which embraces the most technologically advanced systems and solutions. As it is working with its partners such as Jiaxun Feihong, Top Xingda, and Singapore’s ST Electronics, Huawei also displayed the Railway IoT and Urban Rail Cloud solutions based on the latest cloud computing, Big Data, and the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, as well as how these solutions drive the Digital Transformation of the rail sector.
“Huawei cooperates with partners in the global railway industry providing customers from the rail sector with end-to-end solutions that pave the road for their Digital Transformations. New ICT technologies introduce revolutionary changes such as digital collaboration, urban rail cloud computing platforms, and Big Data analytics while maintaining protocols to ensure safe and reliable mission critical train to ground communications. These changes help improve passengers’ travel experience, enhance rail operational efficiency, and driving rail operators towards digital railways,” Yuan Xilin, President of the Transport Sector of Huawei Enterprise Business Group said.
During the conference, Xiong Xianyin, Vice President of Global Rail Industry, Huawei Enterprise Business Group said that “the new ICT will be the market driver in rail industry, the synergy among cloud, pipe and device layer of ICT Infrastructure will make the railway operation more flexible and efficient. Meanwhile, centralized data in Cloud will be necessary and valuable to reshape the procedures in operation and maintenance.”
Some of company’s worldwide cutting-edge technologies
Currently, Huawei’s ICT service solution for railways has been delivered to more than 120,000 km rail lines of over 50 rail integrators and operators worldwide, including five of the global top 10 rail operators. Company’s innovative ICT solutions, products and services are used in more than 170 countries and regions, serving over one-third of the world’s population.
Ampang LRT, Kuala Lumpur: At the invitation of Prasarana, the operator of the line, the delegates of the conference had the opportunity to visit Ampang LRT’s Operation Control and Command Centre, OCC, where they could see how innovative technology helps rail operators to maintain stringent passenger demands. The Ampang LRT extension project marks the first time that Huawei acted as a Systems Integrator, assuming the complete scope of the railway Communications systems. Huawei provided an integrated communications system consisting of Transmission system (backbone), Datacom, Trunking Radio, Telephone system including Passenger Help Points (PHP), Voice Recording, Public Address (PA) system, Passenger Information Display system, CCTV, Central Clock system and Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, as well as the optical cables and other railway communication devices. Huawei was also responsible for the entire engineering process from design, installation, commissioning, integration, to acceptance. Huawei provided Prasarana with EN 50126-compliant end-to-end system assurance services. Construction and reconstruction of ICT infrastructures will help Prasarana ensure the reliable operations on the line, improve O&M efficiency, cut down maintenance costs, and provide an optimal passenger experience.
Digital Transformation: Huawei sees “Digital Transformation of Railways” as the empowerment of rail and metro operators across the world to run more reliable, efficient and safe rail operations on their infrastructure and, at the same time, to easily maintain agile infrastructures on the systems’ life time. Digital Transformation applies concepts to implement standardized technologies that have already proven their value in other industry sectors and are well capable to replicate their significance in the rail sector. Internet of Things (IoT), eLTE Broadband trunking, Urban Rail, Cloud Computing platforms and Big Data analytics are just a few technologies that spring to mind when designing implementations to deliver innovative enterprise services that help to ease traffic congestion, maximize throughput and improve operational efficiency of their existing rail infrastructure.
OpenLab: Huawei is committed to the principle of “Openness, Cooperation, and Mutual Benefits” delivering comprehensive innovation together with global partners, rail supply industry and system integrators. OpenLabs are a crucial tool to ensure these projects are delivered in time and according to customer expectations. Huawei has established a global network of OpenLabs that serve as an open, flexible, and secure platform for joint innovation with local partners. The company built 13 OpenLabs in locations such as Munich, Mexico, Dubai, Singapore, and China and plans to extend this network to a total of 20 by 2019. These labs support extensive cooperation between Huawei and over 400 solution partners globally. Already today the rail sector is benefitting from innovations that are being developed and showcased in some of these OpenLabs helping to create a sound industry ecosystem that drives digital transformation.
Mombasa-Nairobi line, Kenya: It is the first new railway line constructed in Kenya over the past century, connecting populations across the southeast and northwest regions of the country. For this project, Huawei Digital Rail solution played a vivid role to ensure smooth operation of this lighthouse project. Huawei’s next-generation GSM-R solution has been deployed to build the train-to-ground communications network on Mombasa-Nairobi line and, with end-to-end redundancy backup and 99.999% availability, the network guarantees stable transmission of train control signals. Based on mature hardware platforms, the next-generation BTS3900 GSM-R base stations support smooth migration to LTE-R. The transmission network
uses Huawei’s cutting-edge Hybrid MSTP transmission devices that support SDH/IP dual planes. The SDH hard pipes and IP soft pipes comprehensively bear multiple services without compromising the reliability of mission-critical service transmission. In addition, Huawei’s premium communication power supply and Uninterruptible Power System (UPS) products are installed to meet diversified customer requirements on backup power, ensuring high-quality power supplies for communications systems, data centers, security systems, and other critical loads. The safe and efficient operations of the Mombasa-Nairobi line will provide significant support for Kenya’s passenger and freight transport and thus, the economic growth.
EKB high-speed rail, Turkey: The line, linking the cities of Eskişehir, Kütahya, Afyon, and Balıkesir is part of Turkey’s nine-year high-speed railway strategy, launched by TCDD. Up to 42 tunnels were scattered along the 466 km EKB line, and, given the geographic conditions, a considerable attention was paid to radio planning to ensure safe and reliable radio coverage along the line. The line is based on the European Train Control System Level 2 standards which require the highest levels of safety, reliability and interoperability within a multi-vendor GSM-R network infrastructure. Huawei’s ETCS L2-compliant railway operational communication solution for EKB line consists of Distributed base stations (DBSs) ensuring signal coverage in tunnels, and at the same time simplifies equipment deployment, by using an industry-unique distributed base station (DBS) solution. By leveraging multi-remote radio unit (RRU) multi-site cell technology, Huawei’s DBS ensures a high level of quality of service (QoS) and simplifies site provisioning, Huawei’s solution was highly praised by TCDD.
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