As with the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, the railway industry is back on the growth track once again worldwide: between 2019 and 2021, more than 12 000 km of conventional railway and 20 500 km of high speed line opened, of which no less than 18 000 was in China, according to UNIFE’s World Rail Market Study, and a further 19 718 km of new lines are currently under construction worldwide according to UIC’s statistics.
Just as high speed rail market, the global railway supply industry itself is also projected to grow strongly in the next six years, following a slight decline in 2019-21 as a result of the Coronavirus.
As we know, GSM-R is coming to the end of life-cycle, now FRMCS (Future Railway Mobile Communication System is speeding up in railway industry. This is the view of Xiang Xi, Vice President of Huawei Aviation & Rail BU, who presented Huawei latest ICT solutions in railway industry at the recent UIC World Congress on High Speed Rail in Marrakech in March 8-11 this year.
The currently developed Future Railway Mobile Communication System promises a major change for the rail industry, as it is waited to replace GSM-R.
In response, Huawei set out its plans for a product range meeting the emerging Future Railway Mobile Communication System standard at the InnoTrans 2022 trade show in Berlin, and in Marrakech it formally launched its FRMCS IP Bearer Network Solution for Smart Railway.
Huawei’s FRMCS IP Bearer Network Solution for Smart Railway answers higher demand for network upgrades, such as wide bandwidth, low latency, high reliability, elastic scalability and easy operations and maintenance.
Huawei is currently testing FRMCS solution for main line, and Xi reported that these tests are going well. And Huawei FRMCS solution is 4G/5G compatible, so the railway operators have the flexibility to choose 4G or 5G.
Reliable transmission through access at railway stations all way to control hubs
The bearer network is a wireless communication backbone that is designed to provide high speed, reliable, and secure data transmission between trains, trackside assets and control centres.
According to Huawei, its FRMCS IP Bearer Network Solution for Smart Railway equipment enables introduction of an end-to-end unified telecoms network supporting all of a main line railway’s telecoms needs, from local access at railway stations through to managing centralised traffic control hubs.
The IP bearer network provides high reliability and smooth evolution, one-network bearing, flexible deployment, intelligent operations and maintenance.
The IP bearer network uses IPv6 technology and FlexE ‘hard slicing’ to carry data for multiple railway applications, including FRMCS, signalling, and video. These slices can be allocated on demand, assuring 100% bandwidth for mission-critical services and meeting the full diversity of network requirements.
The IP bearer network uses SRv6, which provides flexible optimisation for intelligent traffic steering, ideal to deal with a large number of network connections. Further benefits of SRv6 is the ingress and egress for one-day service provisioning service intent-based forwarding with committed latency, 50 ms protection switching across 100% topology-independent scenarios.
Huawei’s iMaster NCE is an autonomous network management and control system, the ‘brain’ of Huawei’s intent-driven network. It integrates network management, control, and analysis functions. A key aspect of the technology is its ability to manage data transfer from small, low-demand locations right through to the core telecoms backbone. This approach facilitates automatic cross-domain connections, allowing full-service provision to be set up within minutes.
The IP bearer network uses in-band flow measurement and digital mapping technologies. It enables multi-level path visibility, enhances network navigation capabilities, detects network quality in real-time, and identifies and locates faults in minutes.
With the advent of FRMCS, Huawei keeps up with this by launching its FRMCS IP Bearer Network Solution for Smart Railway that builds on cutting-edge IPv6 Enhanced technologies. ‘This solution is ideal for building a converged bearer network featuring high reliability, easy deployment, intelligent operations and maintenance, and smooth evolution’, explains Lyu Liang, Director of Transportation Industry Solutions at Huawei’s Data Communication Product Line. ‘This, in turn, reliably supports multiple services, such as FRMCS, signalling, and video, safeguards railway security and stability, and unleashes digital productivity of smart railways.’
Commitment for shaping the future
Digitalisation of the rail industry is rapidly accelerating and Huawei is committed to keep up with the latest trends and lead the railway digitalisation process with its further innovations. Therefore, it has launched its FRMCS IP Bearer Network Solution for Smart Railway tool that builds on IPv6.
Huawei plans to keep on working with its customers and partners to drive digital transformation of smart railways with continuous innovations.
Find more about Huawei’s FRMCS IP Bearer Network Solution for Smart Railway here https://e.huawei.com/en/industries/railway
